Title: The Scapegoat
Author: Caine, Hall, Sir
Language: English
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THE SCAPEGOAT

By Hall Caine



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

     PREFACE
     1. ISRAEL BEN OLIEL
     2. THE BIRTH OF NAOMI
     3. THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI
     4. THE DEATH OF RUTH
     5. RUTH’S BURIAL
     6. THE SPIRIT-MAID
     7. THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL’S HOUSE
     8. THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT
     9. ISRAEL’S JOURNEY
     10. THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI
     11. ISRAEL’S HOME-COMING
     12. THE BAPTISM OF SOUND
     13. NAOMI’S GREAT GIFT
     14. ISRAEL AT SHAWAN
     15. THE MEETING ON THE SOK
     16. NAOMI’S BLINDNESS
     17. ISRAEL’S GREAT RESOLVE
     18. THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER
     19. THE RAINBOW SIGN
     20. LIFE’S NEW LANGUAGE
     21. ISRAEL IN PRISON
     22. HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA
     23. ISRAEL’S RETURN FROM PRISON
     24. THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN
     25. THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
     26. ALI’S RETURN TO TETUAN
     27. THE FALL OF BEN ABOO
     28. “AT ALLAH-U-KABAR”



PREFACE


_Within sight of an English port, and within hail of English ships as
they pass on to our empire in the East, there is a land where the ways
of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago; a land
wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein
justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a
danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and women
is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to
the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is
Morocco!_

_This is a story of Morocco in the last years of the Sultan Abd
er-Rahman. The ashes of that tyrant are cold, and his grandson sits in
his place; but men who earned his displeasure linger yet in his noisome
dungeons, and women who won his embraces are starving at this hour in
the prison-palaces in which he immured them. His reign is a story of
yesterday; he is gone, he is forgotten; no man so meek and none so mean
but he might spit upon his tomb. Yet the evil work which he did in his
evil time is done to-day, if not by his grandson, then in his grandson’s
name--the degradation of man’s honour, the cruel wrong of woman’s, the
shame of base usury, and the iniquity of justice that may be bought! Of
such corruption this story will tell, for it is a tale of tyranny that
is every day repeated, a voice of suffering going up hourly to the
powers of the world, calling on them to forget the secret hopes and
petty jealousies whereof Morocco is a cause, to think no more of any
scramble for territory when the fated day of that doomed land has come,
and only to look to it and see that he who fills the throne of Abd
er-Rahman shall be the last to sit there._

_Yet it is the grandeur of human nature that when it is trodden down
it waits for no decree of nations, but finds its own solace amid the
baffled struggle against inimical power in the hopes of an exalted
faith. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the
narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning
of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where
humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt. On the one hand, the hard
experience of daily existence; on the other hand, the soul crying out
that the things of this world are not the true realities. Savage vices
make savage virtues. God and man are brought face to face._

_In the heart of Morocco there is one man who lives a life that is like
a hymn, appealing to God against tyranny and corruption and shame. This
great soul is the leader of a vast following which has come to him from
every scoured and beaten corner of the land. His voice sounds throughout
Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all
to him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams
when he sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake._

_With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the joyous
child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass
from place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of
intolerance and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of
the superstition which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have
they been?_



CHAPTER I

ISRAEL BEN OLIEL


Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was
the daughter of a banker in London. The father’s name was Oliel; the
mother’s was Sara. Oliel had held business connections with the house of
Sara’s father, and he came over to England that he might have a personal
meeting with his correspondent. The English banker lived over his
office, near Holborn Bars, and Oliel met with his family. It consisted
of one daughter by a first wife, long dead, and three sons by a second
wife, still living. They were not altogether a happy household, and the
chief apparent cause of discord was the child of the first wife in the
home of the second. Oliel was a man of quick perception, and he saw the
difficulty. That was how it came about that he was married to Sara. When
he returned to Morocco he was some thousand pounds richer than when he
left it, and he had a capable and personable wife into his bargain.

Oliel was a self-centred and silent man, absorbed in getting and
spending, always taking care to have much of the one, and no more than
he could help of the other. Sara was a nervous and sensitive little
woman, hungering for communion and for sympathy. She got little of
either from her husband, and grew to be as silent as he. With the people
of the country of her adoption, whether Jews or Moors, she made no
headway. She never even learnt their language.

Two years passed, and then a child was born to her. This was Israel, and
for many a year thereafter he was all the world to the lonely woman. His
coming made no apparent difference to his father. He grew to be a tall
and comely boy, quick and bright, and inclined to be of a sweet and
cheerful disposition. But the school of his upbringing was a hard one. A
Jewish child in Morocco might know from his cradle that he was not born
a Moor and a Mohammedan.

When the boy was eight years old his father married a second wife,
his first wife being still alive. This was lawful, though unusual in
Tangier. The new marriage, which was only another business transaction
to Oliel, was a shock and a terror to Sara. Nevertheless, she supported
its penalties through three weary years, sinking visibly under them day
after day. By that time a second family had begun to share her husband’s
house, the rivalry of the mothers had threatened to extend to the
children, the domesticity of home was destroyed and its harmony was no
longer possible. Then she left Oliel, and fled back to England, taking
Israel with her.

Her father was dead, and the welcome she got of her half-brothers was
not warm. They had no sympathy with her rebellion against her husband’s
second marriage. If she had married into a foreign country, she should
abide by the ways of it. Sara was heartbroken. Her health had long been
poor, and now it failed her utterly. In less than a month she died.
On her deathbed she committed her boy to the care of her brothers, and
implored them not to send him back to Morocco.

For years thereafter Israel’s life in London was a stern one. If he had
no longer to submit to the open contempt of the Moors, the kicks and
insults of the streets, he had to learn how bitter is the bread that one
is forced to eat at another’s table. When he should have been still at
school he was set to some menial occupation in the bank at Holborn Bars,
and when he ought to have risen at his desk he was required to teach the
sons of prosperous men the way to go above him. Life was playing an evil
game with him, and, though he won, it must be at a bitter price.

Thus twelve years went by, and Israel, now three-and-twenty, was a
tall, silent, very sedate young man, clear-headed on all subjects, and a
master of figures. Never once during that time had his father written
to him, or otherwise recognised his existence, though knowing of his
whereabouts from the first by the zealous importunities of his uncles.
Then one day a letter came written in distant tone and formal manner,
announcing that the writer had been some time confined to his bed, and
did not expect to leave it; that the children of his second wife had
died in infancy; that he was alone, and had no one of his own flesh
and blood to look to his business, which was therefore in the hands of
strangers, who robbed him; and finally, that if Israel felt any duty
towards his father, or, failing that, if he had any wish to consult his
own interest, he would lose no time in leaving England for Morocco.

Israel read the letter without a throb of filial affection; but,
nevertheless, he concluded to obey its summons. A fortnight later he
landed at Tangier. He had come too late. His father had died the day
before. The weather was stormy, and the surf on the shore was heavy, and
thus it chanced that, even while the crazy old packet on which he sailed
lay all day beating about the bay, in fear of being dashed on to the
ruins of the mole, his father’s body was being buried in the little
Jewish cemetery outside the eastern walls, and his cousins, and
cousins’ cousins, to the fifth degree, without loss of time or waste of
sentiment, were busily dividing his inheritance among them.

Next day, as his father’s heir, he claimed from the Moorish court the
restitution of his father’s substance. But his cousins made the Kadi,
the judge, a present of a hundred dollars, and he was declared to be an
impostor, who could not establish his identity. Producing his father’s
letter which had summoned him from London, he appealed from the Kadi
to the Aolama, men wise in the law, who acted as referees in disputed
cases; but it was decided that as a Jew he had no right in Mohammedan
law to offer evidence in a civil court. He laid his case before the
British Consul, but was found to have no claim to English intervention,
being a subject of the Sultan both by birth and parentage. Meantime, his
dispute with his cousins was set at rest for ever by the Governor of the
town, who, concluding that his father had left neither will nor heirs,
confiscated everything he had possessed to the public treasury--that is
to say, to the Kaid’s own uses.

Thus he found himself without standing ground in Morocco, whether as a
Jew, a Moor, or an Englishman, a stranger in his father’s country, and
openly branded as a cheat. That he did not return to England promptly
was because he was already a man of indomitable spirit. Besides that,
the treatment he was having now was but of a piece with what he had
received at all times. Nothing had availed to crush him, even as nothing
ever does avail to crush a man of character. But the obstacles and
torments which make no impression on the mind of a strong man often make
a very sensible impression on his heart; the mind triumphs, it is
the heart that suffers; the mind strengthens and expands after every
besetting plague of life, but the heart withers and wears away.

So far from flying from Morocco when things conspired together to
beat him down, Israel looked about with an equal mind for the means of
settling there.

His opportunity came early. The Governor, either by qualm of conscience
or further freak of selfishness, got him the place of head of the
Oomana, the three Administrators of Customs at Tangier. He held the post
six months only, to the complete satisfaction of the Kaid, but amid the
muttered discontent of the merchants and tradesmen. Then the Governor of
Tetuan, a bigger town lying a long day’s journey to the east, hearing
of Israel that as Ameen of Tangier he had doubled the custom revenues in
half a year, invited him to fill an informal, unofficial, and irregular
position as assessor of tributes.

Now, it would be a long task to tell of the work which Israel did in
his new calling: how he regulated the market dues, and appointed a
Mut’hasseb, a clerk of the market, to collect them--so many moozoonahs
for every camel sold, so many for every horse, mule, and ass, so many
floos for every fowl, and so many metkals for the purchase and sale of
every slave; how he numbered the houses and made lists of the trades,
assessing their tribute by the value of their businesses--so much for
gun-making, so much for weaving, so much for tanning, and so on through
the line of them, great and small, good and bad, even from the trades
of the Jewish silversmiths and the Moorish packsaddle-makers down to the
callings of the Arab water-carriers and the ninety public women.

All this he did by the strict law and letter of the Koran, which
entitled the Sultan to a tithe of all earnings whatsoever; but it would
not wrong the truth to say that he did it also by the impulse of a sour
and saddened heart. The world had shown no mercy to him, and he need
show no mercy to the world. Why talk of pity? It was only a name, an
idea a mocking thought. In the actual reckoning of life there was no
such name as pity. Thus did Israel justify himself in all his dealings,
whatever their severity and the rigour wherewith they wrought.

And the people felt the strong hand that was on them, and they cursed
it.

“Ya Allah! Allah!” the Moors would cry. “Who is this Jew--this son of
the English--that he should be made our master?”

They muttered at him in the streets, they scowled upon him, and at
length they insulted him openly. Since his return from England he had
resumed the dress of his race in his country--the long dark gabardine
or kaftan, with a scarf for girdle, the black slippers, and the black
skull-cap. And, going one day by the Grand Mosque, a group of the
beggars; who lay always by the gate, called on him to uncover his feet.

“Jew! Dog!” they cried, “there is no god but God! Curses on your
relations! Off with your slippers!”

He paid no heed to their commands, but made straight onward. Then one
blear-eyed and scab-faced cripple scrambled up and struck off his cap
with a crutch. He picked it up again without a look or a word, and
strode away. But next morning, at early prayers, there was a place empty
at the door of the mosque. Its accustomed occupant lay in the prison at
the Kasbah.

And if the Muslimeen hated Israel for what he was doing for their
Governor, the Jews hated him yet more because it was being done for a
Moor.

“He has sold himself to our enemy,” they said, “against the welfare of
his own nation.”

At the synagogue they ignored him, and in taking the votes of their
people they counted others and passed him by. He showed no malice. Only
his strong face twitched at each fresh insult and his head was held
higher. Only this, and one other sign of suffering in that secret place
of his withering heart, which God’s eye alone could see.

Thus far he had done no more to Moor and Jew than exact that tenth part
of their substance which the faiths of both required that they should
pay. But now his work went further. A little group of old Jews, all held
in honour among their people--Abraham Ohana, nicknamed Pigman, son of
a former rabbi; Judah ben Lolo, an elder of his synagogue; and Reuben
Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast into the Kasbah for
gross and base usury.

At this the Jewish quarter was thrown into wild hubbub. The hand that
was on their people was a daring and terrible one. None doubted whose
hand it was--it was the hand of young Israel the Jew.

When the three old usurers had bought themselves out of the Kasbah, they
put their heads together and said, “Let us drive this fellow out of the
Mellah, and so shall he be driven out of the town.” Then the owner of
the house which Israel rented for his lodging evicted him by a poor
excuse, and all other Jewish owners refused him as tenant. But the
conspiracy failed. By command of the Governor, or by his influence,
Israel was lodged by the Nadir, the administrator of mosque property,
in one of the houses belonging to the mosque on the Moorish side of the
Mellah walls.

Seeing this, the usurers laid their heads together again and said, “Let
us see that no man of our nation serve him, and so shall his life be a
burden.” Then the two Jews who had been his servants deserted him, and
when he asked for Moors he was told that the faithful might not obey the
unbeliever; and when he would have sent for negroes out of the Soudan he
was warned that a Jew might not hold a slave. But the conspiracy failed
again. Two black female slaves from Soos, named Fatimah and Habeebah,
were bought in the name of the Governor and assigned to Israel’s
service.

And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel’s
material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they
said, “He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named
the prophetess put her curse upon him.” Then she who was so called, one
Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
with the groans of God’s elect, so should his own spirit be broken
within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.

“The clouds are not hurt,” he thought, “by the bark of dogs.”

Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture
him; yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young,
and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young
Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of
Israel’s duty she knew little, save what report had said of it, that
it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among his
own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could form
no judgment. But what a woman’s eyes might see in him, without help of
other knowledge, that she saw.

She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been
cheated of his youth and had missed his early manhood, the when he was
ignored he ignored his insult, and when he was reviled he answered not
again; in a word, the he was silent and strong and alone, and, above all
that he was sad.

These were credentials enough to the true girl’s favour, and Israel soon
learnt that the house of the Rabbi was open to him. There the lonely man
first found himself. The cold eyes of his little world had seen him as
his father’s son, but the light and warmth of the eyes of Ruth saw
him as the son of his mother also. The Rabbi himself was old, very
old--ninety years of age--and length of days had taught him charity.
And so it was that when, in due time, Israel came with many excuses and
asked for Ruth in marriage, the Rabbi gave her to him.

The betrothal followed, but none save the notary and his witnesses stood
beside Israel when he crossed hands over the handkerchief; and, when
the marriage came in its course, few stood beside the Chief Rabbi.
Nevertheless, all the Jews of the quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan
were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a
great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them,
gathered in front of the Rabbi’s house that they might hiss and jeer.

The Chacham heard them from where he sat under the stars in his patio,
and when at last the voice of Rebecca the prophetess came to him above
the tumult, crying, “Woe to her that has married the enemy of her
nation, and woe to him that gave her against the hope of his people!
They shall taste death. He shall see them fall from his side and die,”
 then the old man listened and trembled visibly. In confusion and fierce
anger he rose up and stumbled through the crooked passage to the door,
and flinging it wide, he stood in the doorway facing them that stood
without.

“Peace! Peace!” he cried, “and shame! shame! Remember the doom of him
that shall curse the high priest of the Lord.”

This he spoke in a voice that shook with wrath. Then suddenly, his voice
failing him, he said in a broken whisper, “My good people, what is this?
Your servant is grown old in your service. Sixty and odd years he has
shared your sorrows and your burdens. What has he done this day that
your women should lift up their voices against him?”

But, in awe of his white head in the moonlight, the rabble that stood in
the darkness were silent and made no answer. Then he staggered back, and
Israel helped him into his house, and Ruth did what she could to compose
him. But he was woefully shaken, and that night he died.

When the Rabbi’s death became known in the morning, the Jews whispered,
“It is the first-fruits!” and the Moors touched their foreheads and
murmured “It is written!”



CHAPTER II

THE BIRTH OF NAOMI


Israel paid no heed to Jew or Moor, but in due time he set about the
building of a house for himself and for Ruth, that they might live in
comfort many years together. In the south-east corner of the Mellah
he placed it, and he built it partly in the Moorish and partly in the
English fashion, with an open court and corridors, marble pillars, and a
marble staircase, walls of small tiles, and ceilings of stalactites, but
also with windows and with doors. And when his house was raised he put
no haities into it, and spread no mattresses on the floors, but sent for
tables and chairs and couches out of England; and everything he did in
this wise cut him off the more from the people about him, both Moors and
Jews.

And being settled at last, and his own master in his own dwelling, out
of the power of his enemies to push him back into the streets, suddenly
it occurred to him for the first time that whereas the house he had
built was a refuge for himself, it was doomed to be little better than a
prison for his wife. In marrying Ruth he had enlarged the circle of his
intimates by one faithful and loving soul, but in marrying him she had
reduced even her friends to that number. Her father was dead; if she was
the daughter of a Chief Rabbi she was also the wife of an outcast, the
companion of a pariah, and save for him, she must be for ever alone.
Even their bondwomen still spoke a foreign dialect, and commerce with
them was mainly by signs.

Thinking of all this with some remorse, one idea fixed itself on
Israel’s mind, one hope on his heart--that Ruth might soon bear a child.
Then would her solitude be broken by the dearest company that a woman
might know on earth. And, if he had wronged her, his child would make
amends.

Israel thought of this again and again. The delicious hope pursued him.
It was his secret, and he never gave it speech. But time passed, and no
child was born. And Ruth herself saw that she was barren, and she began
to cast down her head before her husband. Israel’s hope was of longer
life, but the truth dawned upon him at last. Then, when he perceived
that his wife was ashamed, a great tenderness came over him. He had been
thinking of her; that a child would bring her solace, and meanwhile she
had thought only of him, that a child would be his pride. After that he
never went abroad but he came home with stories of women wailing at the
cemetery over the tombs of their babes, of men broken in heart for loss
of their sons, and of how they were best treated of God who were given
no children.

This served his big soul for a time to cheat it of its disappointment,
half deceiving Ruth, and deceiving himself entirely. But one day the
woman Rebecca met him again at the street-corner by his own house, and
she lifted her gaunt finger into his face, and cried, “Israel ben Oliel,
the judgment of the Lord is upon you, and will not suffer you to raise
up children to be a reproach and a curse among your people!”

“Out upon you, woman!” cried Israel, and almost in the first delirium of
his pain he had lifted his hand to strike her. Her other predictions
had passed him by, but this one had smitten him. He went home and shut
himself in his room, and throughout that day he let no one come near to
him.

Israel knew his own heart at last. At his wife’s barrenness he was now
angry with the anger of a proud man whose pride had been abased. What
was the worth of it, after all, that he had conquered the fate that had
first beaten him down? What did it come to that the world was at his
feet? Heaven was above him, and the poorest man in the Mellah who was
the father of a child might look down on him with contempt.

That night sleep forsook his eyelids, and his mouth was parched and
his spirit bitter. And sometimes he reproached himself with a thousand
offences, and sometimes he searched the Scriptures, that he might
persuade himself that he had walked blameless before the Lord in the
ordinances and commandments of God.

Meantime, Ruth, in her solitude, remembered that it was now three years
since she had been married to Israel, and that by the laws, both of
their race and their country, a woman who had been long barren might
straightway be divorced by her husband.

Next morning a message of business came from the Khaleefa, but Israel
would not answer it. Then came an order to him from the Governor, but
still he paid no heed. At length he heard a feeble knock at the door of
his room. It was Ruth, his wife, and he opened to her and she entered.

“Send me away from you!” she cried. “Send me away!”

“Not for the place of the Kaid,” he answered stoutly; “no, nor the
throne of the Sultan!”

At that she fell on his neck and kissed him, and they mingled their
tears together. But he comforted her at length, and said, “Look up, my
dearest! look up! I am a proud man among men, but it is even as the Lord
may deal with me. And which of us shall murmur against God?”

At that word Ruth lifted her head from his bosom and her eyes were full
of a sudden thought.

“Then let us ask of the Lord,” she whispered hotly, “and surely He will
hear our prayer.”

“It is the voice of the Lord Himself!” cried Israel; “and this day it
shall be done!”

At the time of evening prayers Israel and Ruth went up hand in hand
together to the synagogue, in a narrow lane off the Sok el Foki. And
Ruth knelt in her place in the gallery close under the iron grating and
the candles that hung above it, and she prayed: “O Lord, have pity on
this Thy servant, and take away her reproach among women. Give her grace
in Thine eyes, O Lord, that her husband be not ashamed. Grant her a
child of Thy mercy, that his eye may smile upon her. Yet not as
she willeth, but as Thou willest, O Lord, and Thy servant will be
satisfied.”

But Israel stood long on the floor with his hand on his heart and his
eyes to the ground, and he called on God as a debtor that will not
be appeased, saying: “How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord? My enemies
triumph over me and foretell Thy doom upon me. They sit in the
lurking-places of the streets to deride me. Confound my enemies, O Lord,
and rebuke their counsels. Remember Ruth, I beseech Thee, that she is
patient and her heart is humbled. Give her children of Thy servant, and
her first-born shall be sanctified unto Thee. Give her one child, and
it shall be Thine--if it is a son, to be a Rabbi in Thy synagogues. Hear
me, O Lord, and give heed to my cry, for behold, I swear it before Thee.
One child, but one, only one, son or daughter, and all my desire is
before Thee. How long wilt Thou forget me, O Lord?”

The message of the Khaleefa which Israel had not answered in his trouble
was a request from the Shereef of Wazzan that he should come without
delay to that town to count his rent-charges and assess his dues. This
request the Governor had transformed into a command, for the Shereef
was a prince of Islam in his own country, and in many provinces the
believers paid him tribute. So in three days’ time Israel was ready
to set out on his journey, with men and mules at his door, and camels
packed with tents. He was likely to be some months absent from Tetuan,
and it was impossible that Ruth should go with him. They had never been
separated before, and Ruth’s concern was that they should be so long
parted, but Israel’s was a deeper matter.

“Ruth,” he said when his time came, “I am going away from you, but my
enemies remain. They see evil in all my doings, and in this act also
they will find offence. Promise me that if they make a mock at you for
your husband’s sake you will not see them; if they taunt you that you
will not hear them; and if they ask anything concerning me that you will
answer them not at all.”

And Ruth promised him that if his enemies made a mock at her she should
be as one that was blind, if they taunted her as one that was deaf, and
if they questioned her concerning her husband as one that was dumb. Then
they parted with many tears and embraces.

Israel was half a year absent in the town and province of Wazzan, and,
having finished the work which he came to do, he was sent back to Tetuan
loaded with presents from the Shereef, and surrounded by soldiers and
attendants, who did not leave him until they had brought him to the door
of his own house.

And there, in her chamber, sat Ruth awaiting him, her eyes dim with
tears of joy, her throat throbbing like the throat of a bird, and great
news on her tongue.

“Listen,” she whispered; “I have something to tell you--”

“Ah, I know it,” he cried; “I know it already. I see it in your eyes.”

“Only listen,” she whispered again, while she toyed with the neck of his
kaftan, and coloured deeply, not daring to look into his face.

Their prayer in the synagogue had been heard, and the child they had
asked for was to come.

Israel was like a man beside himself with joy. He burst in upon the
message of his wife, and caught her to his breast again and again,
and kissed her. Long they stood together so, while he told her of the
chances which had befallen him during his absence from her, and she
told him of her solitude of six long months, unbroken save for the poor
company of Fatimah and Habeebah, wherein she had been blind and deaf and
dumb to all the world.

During the months thereafter until Ruth’s time was full Israel sat with
her constantly. He could scarce suffer himself to leave her company. He
covered her chamber with fruits and flowers. There was no desire of her
heart but he fulfilled it. And they talked together lovingly of how they
would name the child when the time came to name it. Israel concluded
that if it was a son it should be called David, and Ruth decided that if
it was a daughter it should be called Naomi. And Ruth delighted to tell
of how when it was weaned she should take it up to the synagogue and
say, “O Lord: I am the woman that knelt before Thee praying. For this
child I prayed, and Thou hast heard my prayer.” And Israel told of how
his son should grow up to be a Rabbi to minister before God, and how
in those days it should come to pass that the children of his father’s
enemies should crouch to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
bread. Thus they built themselves castles in the air for the future of
the child that was to come.

Ruth’s time came at last, and it was also the time of the Feast of
the Passover, being in the month of Nisan. This was a cause of joy to
Israel, for he was eager to triumph over his enemies face to face, and
he could not wait eight other days for the Feast of the circumcision. So
he set a supper fit for a king: the fore-leg of a sheep and the fore-leg
of an ox, the egg roasted in ashes, the balls of Charoseth, the three
Mitzvoth, and the wine, And by the time the supper was ready the midwife
had been summoned, and it was the day of the night of the Seder.

Then Israel sent messengers round the Mellah to summon his guests. Only
his enemies he invited, his bitterest foes, his unceasing revilers, and
among them were the three base usurers, Abraham Pigman, Judah ben Lolo,
and Reuben Maliki. “They cursed me,” he thought, “and I shall look on
their confusion.” His heart thirsted to summon Rebecca Bensabbot also,
but well he knew that her dainty masters would not sit at meat with her.

And when the enemies were bidden, all of them excused themselves and
refused, saying it was the Feast of the Passover, when no man should
sit save in his own house and at his own table. But Israel was not to be
gainsaid. He went out to them himself, and said, “Come, let bygones be
bygones. It is the feast of our nation. Let us eat and drink together.”
 So, partly by his importunity, but mainly in their bewilderment, yet
against all rule and custom, they suffered themselves to go with him.

And when they were come into his house and were seated about his table
in the patio, and he had washed his hands and taken the wine and blessed
it, and passed it to all, and they had drunk together, he could not keep
back his tongue from taunting them. Then when he had washed again and
dipped the celery in the vinegar, and they had drunk of the wine once
more, he taunted them afresh and laughed. But nothing yet had they
understood of his meaning, and they looked into each other’s faces and
asked, “What is it?”

“Wait! Only wait!” Israel answered. “You shall see!”

At that moment Ruth sent for him to her chamber, and he went in to her.

“I am a sorrowful woman,” she said. “Some evil is about to befall--I
know it, I feel it.”

But he only rallied her and laughed again, and prophesied joy on the
morrow. Then, returning to the patio, where the passover cakes had been
broken, he called for the supper, and bade his guests to eat and drink
as much as their hearts desired.

They could do neither now, for the fear that possessed them at sight of
Israel’s frenzy. The three old usurers, Abraham, Judah, and Reuben, rose
to go, but Israel cried, “Stay! Stay, and see what is come!” and under
the very force of his will they yielded and sat down again.

Still Israel drank and laughed and derided them. In the wild torrent of
his madness he called them by names they knew and by names they did not
know--Harpagon, Shylock, Bildad, Elihu--and at every new name he laughed
again. And while he carried himself so in the outer court the slave
woman Fatimah came from the inner room with word that the child was
born.

At that Israel was like a man distraught. He leapt up from the table and
faced full upon his guests, and cried, “Now you know what it is; and now
you know why you are bidden to this supper! You are here to rejoice
with me over my enemies! Drink! drink! Confusion to all of them!” And he
lifted a winecup and drank himself.

They were abashed before him, and tried to edge out of the patio into
the street; but he put his back to the passage, and faced them again.

“You will not drink?” he said. “Then listen to me.” He dashed the
winecup out of his hand, and it broke into fragments on the floor. His
laughter was gone, his face was aflame, and his voice rose to a shrill
cry. “You foretold the doom of God upon me, you brought me low, you made
me ashamed: but behold how the Lord has lifted me up! You set your women
to prophesy that God would not suffer me to raise up children to be a
reproach and a curse among my people; but God has this day given me a
son like the best of you. More than that--more than that--my son shall
yet see--”

The slave woman was touching his arm. “It is a girl,” she said; “a
girl!”

For a moment Israel stammered and paused. Then he cried, “No matter!
She shall see your own children fatherless, and with none to show them
mercy! She shall see the iniquity of their fathers remembered against
them! She shall see them beg their bread, and seek it in desolate
places! And now you can go! Go! go!”

He had stepped aside as he spoke, and with a sweep of his arm he was
driving them all out like sheep before him, dumbfounded and with their
eyes in the dust, when suddenly there was a low cry from the inner room.

It was Ruth calling for her husband. Israel wheeled about and went in
to her hurriedly, and his enemies, by one impulse of evil instinct,
followed him and listened from the threshold.

Ruth’s face was a face of fear, and her lips moved, but no voice came
from them.

And Israel said, “How is it with you, my dearest joy of my joy and pride
of my pride?”

Then Ruth lifted the babe from her bosom and said “The Lord has counted
my prayer to me as sin--look, see; the child is both dumb and blind!”

At that word Israel’s heart died within him, but he muttered out of his
dry throat, “No, no, never believe it!”

“True, true, it is true,” she moaned; “the child has not uttered a cry,
and its eyelids have not blinked at the light.”

“Never believe it, I say!” Israel growled, and he lifted the babe in his
arms to try it.

But when he held it to the fading light of the window which opened upon
the street where the woman called the prophetess had cursed him, the
eyes of the child did not close, neither did their pupils diminish. Then
his limbs began to tremble, so that the midwife took the babe out of his
arms and laid it again on its mother’s bosom.

And Ruth wept over it, saying, “Even if it were a son never could it
serve in the synagogue! Never! Never!”

At that Israel began to curse and to swear. His enemies had now pushed
themselves into the chamber, and they cried, “Peace! Peace!” And old
Judah ben Lolo, the elder of the synagogue, grunted, and said, “Is it
not written that no one afflicted of God shall minister in His temples?”

Israel stared around in silence into the faces about him, first into
the face of his wife, and then into the faces of his enemies whom he
had bidden. Then he fell to laughing hideously and crying, “What matter?
Every monkey is a gazelle to its mother!” But after that he staggered,
his knees gave way, he pitched half forward and half aside, like a
falling horse, and with a deep groan he fell with his face to the floor.

The midwife and the slave lifted him up and moistened his lips with
water; but his enemies turned and left him, muttering among themselves,
“The Lord killeth and maketh alive, He bringeth low and lifteth up, and
into the pit that the evil man diggeth or another He causeth his foot to
slip.”



CHAPTER III

THE CHILDHOOD OF NAOMI


Throughout Tetuan and the country round about Israel was now an object
of contempt. God had declared against him, God had brought him low,
God Himself had filled him with confusion. Then why should man show him
mercy?

But if he was despised he was still powerful. None dare openly insult
him. And, between their fear and their scorn of him, the shifts of the
rabble to give vent to their contempt were often ludicrous enough. Thus,
they would call their dogs and their asses by his name, and the dogs
would be the scabbiest in the streets, and the asses the laziest in the
market.

He would be caught in the crush of the traffic at the town gate or at
the gate of the Mellah, and while he stood aside to allow a line of
pack-mules to pass he would hear a voice from behind him crying huskily,
“Accursed old Israel! Get on home to your mother!” Then, turning quickly
round, he would find that close at his heels a negro of most innocent
countenance was cudgelling his donkey by that title.

He would go past the Saints’ Houses in the public ways, and at the sound
of his footsteps the bleached and eyeless lepers who sat under the white
walls crying “Allah! Allah! Allah!” would suddenly change their cry to
“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!” “Go on! Go on! Go on!”

He would walk across the Sok on Fridays, and hear shrieks and peals of
laughter, and see grinning faces with gleaming white teeth turned in his
direction, and he would know that the story-tellers were mimicking his
voice and the jugglers imitating his gestures.

His prosperity counted for nothing against the open brand of God’s
displeasure. The veriest muck-worm in the market-place spat out at sight
of him. Moor and Jew, Arab and Berber--they all despised him!

Nevertheless, the disaster which had befallen his house had not crushed
him. It had brought out every fibre of his being, every muscle of his
soul. He had quarrelled with God by reason of it, and his quarrel with
God had made his quarrel with his fellow-man the fiercer.

There was just one man in the town who found no offence in either form
of warfare. The more wicked the one and the more outrageous the other,
the better for his person.

It was the Governor of Tetuan. His name was El Arby, but he was known
as Ben Aboo, the son of his father. That father had been none other
than the late Sultan. Therefore Ben Aboo was a brother of Abd er-Rahman,
though by another mother, a negro slave. To be a Sultan’s brother in
Morocco is not to be a Sultan’s favourite, but a possible aspirant to
his throne. Nevertheless Ben Aboo had been made a Kaid, a chief, in the
Sultan’s army, and eventually a commander-in-chief of his cavalry.
In that capacity he had led a raid for arrears of tribute on the Beni
Hasan, the Beni Idar, and the Wad Ras These rebellious tribes inhabit
the country near to Tetuan, and hence Ben Aboo’s attention had been
first directed to that town. When he had returned from his expedition he
offered the Sultan fifteen thousand dollars for the place of its Basha
or Governor, and promised him thirty thousand dollars a year as tribute.
The Sultan took his money, and accepted his promise. There was a Basha
at Tetuan already, but that was a trifling difficulty. The good man
was summoned to the Sultan’s presence, accused of appropriating the
Shereefian tributes, stripped of all he had, and cast into prison.

That was how Ben Aboo had become Governor of Tetuan, and the story of
how Israel had become his informal Administrator of Affairs is no
less curious. At first Ben Aboo seemed likely to lose by his dubious
transaction. His new function was partly military and partly civil. He
was a valiant soldier--the black blood of his slave-mother had counted
for so much; but he was a bad administrator--he could neither read nor
write nor reckon figures. In this dilemma his natural colleague would
have been his Khaleefa, his deputy, Ali bin Jillool, but because this
man had been the deputy of his predecessor also, he could not trust him.
He had two other immediate subordinates, his Commander of Artillery and
his Commander of Infantry, but neither of them could spell the letters
of his name. Then there was his Taleb the Adel, his scribe the notary,
Hosain ben Hashem, styled Haj, because he had made the pilgrimage to
Mecca, but he was also the Imam, or head of the Mosque, and the wily
Ben Aboo foresaw the danger of some day coming into collision with the
religious sentiment of his people. Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed
ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he
wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of
circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan.

Israel’s first years in his strange office had satisfied his master
entirely. He had carried the Basha’s seal and acted for him in all
affairs of money. The revenues had risen to fifty thousand dollars, so
that the Basha had twenty thousand to the good. Then Ben Aboo’s ambition
began to override itself. He started an oil-mill, and wanted Israel to
select a hundred houses owned by rich men, that he might compel each
house to take ten kollahs of oil--an extravagant quantity, at seven
dollars for each kollah--an exorbitant price. Israel had refused. “It is
not just,” he had said.

Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor
had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a
gross and wicked tax, but Israel’s answer had been the same. “There is
no evil in the world but injustice,” he had said. “Do justice, and you
do all that God can ask or man expect.”

For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by
day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn
of that day whereon he should need him no more.

But since the disaster which had befallen Israel’s house everything
had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious
means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning
the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false
judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to
send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver
dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was
worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having
changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to
complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together,
their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times
the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear
of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed, and some were entirely
ruined.

It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and
their asses might bear his name, but their own lives and liberty must
answer to it.

Israel looked on at all with an equal mind, neither flinching at his
indignities nor glorying in his power. He beheld the wreck of families
without remorse, and heard the wail of women and the cry of children
without a qualm. Neither did he delight in the sufferings of them that
had derided him. His evil impulse was a higher matter--his faith in
justice had been broken up. He had been wrong. There was no such thing
as justice in the world, and there could, therefore, be no such thing
as injustice. There was no thing but the blind swirl of chance, and the
wild scramble for life. The man had quarrelled with God.

But Israel’s heart was not yet dead. There was one place, where he who
bore himself with such austerity towards the world was a man of great
tenderness. That place was his own home. What he saw there was enough to
stir the fountains of his being--nay, to exhaust them, and to send him
abroad as a river-bed that is dry.

In that first hour of his abasement, after he had been confounded before
the enemies whom he had expected to confound, Israel had thought of
himself, but Ruth’s unselfish heart had even then thought only of the
babe.

The child was born blind and dumb and deaf. At the feast of life there
was no place left for it. So Ruth turned her face from it to the wall,
and called on God to take it.

“Take it!” she cried--“take it! Make haste, O God, make haste and take
it!”

But the child did not die. It lived and grew strong. Ruth herself
suckled it, and as she nourished it in her bosom her heart yearned over
it, and she forgot the prayer she had prayed concerning it. So, little
by little, her spirit returned to her, and day by day her soul deceived
her, and hour by hour an angel out of heaven seemed to come to her side
and whisper “Take heart of hope, O Ruth! God does not afflict willingly.
Perhaps the child is not blind, perhaps it is not deaf, perhaps it is
not dumb. Who shall ye say? Wait and see!”

And, during the first few months of its life, Ruth could see no
difference in her child from the children of other women. Sometimes she
would kneel by its cradle and gaze into the flower-cup of its eye, an
the eye was blue and beautiful, and there was nothing to say that the
little cup was broken, and the little chamber dark. And sometimes she
would look at the pretty shell of its ear, and the ear was round and
full as a shell on the shore, and nothing told her that the voice of the
sea was not heard in it, and that all within was silence.

So Ruth cherished her hope in secret, and whispered her heart and said,
“It is well, all is well with the child. She will look upon my face and
see it, and listen to my voice and hear it, and her own little tongue
will yet speak to me, and make me very glad.” And then an ineffable
serenity would spread over her face and transfigure it.

But when the time was come that a child’s eyes, having grown familiar
with the light, should look on its little hands, and stare at its
little fingers, and clutch at its cradle, and gaze about in a peaceful
perplexity at everything, still the eyes of Ruth’s child did not open
in seeing, but lay idle and empty. And when the time was ripe that
a child’s ears should hear from hour to hour the sweet babble of a
mother’s love, and its tongue begin to give back the words in lisping
sounds, the ear of Ruth’s child heard nothing, and its tongue was mute.

Then Ruth’s spirit sank, but still the angel out of heaven seemed to
come to her, and find her a thousand excuses, and say, “Wait, Ruth; only
wait, only a little longer.”

So Ruth held back her tears, and bent above her babe again, and watched
for its smile that should answer to her smile, and listened for the
prattle of its little lips. But never a sound as of speech seemed to
break the silence between the words that trembled from her own tongue,
and never once across her baby’s face passed the light of her tearful
smile. It was a pitiful thing to see her wasted pains, and most pitiful
of all for the pains she was at to conceal them. Thus, every day at
midday she would carry her little one into the patio, and watch if its
eyes should blink in the sunshine; but if Israel chanced to come upon
her then, she would drop her head and say, “How sweet the air is to-day,
and how pleasant to sit in the sun!”

“So it is,” he would answer, “so it is.”

Thus, too, when a bird was singing from the fig-tree that grew in the
court, she would catch up her child and carry it close, and watch if
its ears should hear; but if Israel saw her, she would laugh--a little
shrill laugh like a cry--and cover her face in confusion.

“How merry you are, sweetheart,” he would say, and then pass into the
house.

For a time Israel tried to humour her, seeming not to see what he saw,
and pretending not to hear what he heard. But every day his heart bled
at sight of her, and one day he could bear up no longer, for his very
soul had sickened, and he cried, “Have done, Ruth!--for mercy’s sake,
have done! The child is a soul in chains, and a spirit in prison. Her
eyes are darkness, like the tomb’s, and her ears are silence, like the
grave’s. Never will she smile to her mother’s smile, or answer to her
father’s speech. The first sound she will hear will be the last trump,
and the first face she will see will be the face of God.”

At that, Ruth flung herself down and burst into a flood of tears.
The hope that she had cherished was dead. Israel could comfort her no
longer. The fountain of his own heart was dry. He drew a long breath,
and went away to his bad work at the Kasbah.

The child lived and thrived. They had called her Naomi, as they had
agreed to do before she was born, though no name she knew of herself,
and a mockery it seemed to name her. At four years of age she was
a creature of the most delicate beauty. Notwithstanding her Jewish
parentage, she was fair as the day and fresh as the dawn. And if her
eyes were darkness, there was light within her soul; and if her ears
were silence, there was music within her heart. She was brighter than
the sun which she could not see, and sweeter than the songs which she
could not hear. She was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage, and never
did she fret at the bars which bound her. And, like the bird that sings
at midnight, her cheery soul sang in its darkness.

Only one sound seemed ever to come from her little lips, and it was the
sound of laughter. With this she lay down to sleep at night, and rose
again in the morning. She laughed as she combed her hair, and laughed
again as she came dancing out of her chamber at dawn.

She had only one sentinel on the outpost of her spirit, and that was the
sense of touch and feeling. With this she seemed to know the day from
the night, and when the sun was shining and when the sky was dark. She
knew her mother, too, by the touch of her fingers, and her father by
the brushing of his beard. She knew the flowers that grew in the fields
outside the gate of the town, and she would gather them in her lap,
as other children did, and bring them home with her in her hands. She
seemed almost to know their colours also, for the flowers which she
would twine in her hair were red, and the white were those which she
would lay on her bosom. And truly a flower she was of herself, whereto
the wind alone could whisper, and only the sun could speak aloud.

Sweet and touching were the efforts she sometimes made to cling to them
that were about her. Thus her heart was the heart of a child, and she
knew no delight like to that of playing with other children. But her
father’s house was under a ban; no child of any neighbour in Tetuan was
allowed to cross its threshold, and, save for the children whom she met
in the fields when she walked there by her mother’s hand, no child did
she ever meet.

Ruth saw this, and then, for the first time, she became conscious of
the isolation in which she had lived since her marriage with Israel. She
herself had her husband for companion and comrade, but her little Naomi
was doubly and trebly alone--first, alone as a child that is the only
child of her parents; again, alone as a child whose parents are cut off
from the parents of other children; and yet again, once more, alone as a
child that is blind and dumb.

But Israel saw it also, and one day he brought home with him from the
Kasbah a little black boy with a sweet round face and big innocent white
eyes which might have been the eyes of an angel. The boy’s name was
Ali, and he was four years old. His father had killed his mother for
infidelity and neglect of their child, and, having no one to buy him out
of prison, he had that day been executed. Then little Ali had been left
alone in the world, and so Israel had taken him.

Ruth welcomed the boy, and adopted him. He had been born a Mohammedan,
but secretly she brought him up as a Jew. And for some years thereafter
no difference did she make between him and her own child that other eyes
could see. They ate together, they walked abroad together, they played
together, they slept together, and the little black head of the boy lay
with the fair head of the girl on the same white pillow.

Strange and pathetic were the relations between these little exiles of
humanity I One knew not whether to laugh or cry at them. First, on Ali’s
part, a blank wonderment that when he cried to Naomi, “Come!” she did
not hear, when he asked “Why?” she did not answer; and when he said
“Look!” she did not see, though her blue eyes seemed to gaze full into
his face. Then, a sort of amused bewilderment that her little nervous
fingers were always touching his arms and his hands, and his neck and
his throat. But long before he had come to know that Naomi was not as
he was, that Nature had not given her eyes to see as he saw, and ears to
hear as he heard, and a tongue to speak as he spoke, Nature herself had
overstepped the barriers that divided her from him. He found that Naomi
had come to understand him, whatever in his little way he did, and
almost whatever in his little way he said. So he played with her as he
would have played with any other playmate, laughing with her, calling
to her, and going through his foolish little boyish antics before her.
Nevertheless, by some mysterious knowledge of Nature’s own teaching, he
seemed to realise that it was his duty to take care of her. And when the
spirit and the mischief in his little manly heart would prompt him to
steal out of the house, and adventure into the streets with Naomi by his
side, he would be found in the thick of the throng perhaps at the heels
of the mules and asses, with Naomi’s hand locked in his hand, trying to
push the great creatures of the crowd from before her, and crying in his
brave little treble, “Arrah!” “Ar-rah!” “Ar-r-rah!”

As for Naomi, the coming of little black Ali was a wild delight to her.
Whatever Ali did, that would she do also. If he ran she would run; if he
sat she would sit; and meanwhile she would laugh with a heart of glee,
though she heard not what he said, and saw not what he did, and knew not
what he meant. At the time of the harvest, when Ruth took them out into
the fields, she would ride on Ali’s back, and snatch at the ears of
barley and leap in her seat and laugh, yet nothing would she see of the
yellow corn, and nothing would she hear of the song of the reapers, and
nothing would she know of the cries of Ali, who shouted to her while
he ran, forgetting in his playing that she heard him not. And at night,
when Ruth put them to bed in their little chamber, and Ali knelt with
his face towards Jerusalem, Naomi would kneel beside him with a reverent
air, and all her laughter would be gone. Then, as he prayed his prayer,
her little lips would move as if she were praying too, and her little
hands would be clasped together, and her little eyes would be upraised.

“God bless father, and mother, and Naomi, and everybody,” the black boy
would say.

And the little maid would touch his hands and hi throat, and pass her
fingers over his face from his eyelids to his lips, and then do as he
did, and in her silence seem to echo him.

Pretty and piteous sights! Who could look on them without tears? One
thing at least was clear if the soul of this child was in prison,
nevertheless it was alive; and if it was in chains, nevertheless it
could not die, but was immortal and unmaimed and waited only for the
hour when it should be linked to other souls, soul to soul in the chains
of speech. But the years went on, and Naomi grew in beauty and increased
in sweetness, but no angel came down to open the darkened windows of her
eyes, and draw aside the heavy curtains of her ears.



CHAPTER IV

THE DEATH OF RUTH


For all her joy and all her prettiness, Naomi was a burden which only
love could bear. To think of the girl by day, and to dream of her by
night, never to sit by her without pity of her helplessness, and never
to leave her without dread of the mischances that might so easily
befall, to see for her, to hear for her, to speak for her, truly the
tyranny of the burden was terrible.

Ruth sank under it. Through seven years she was eyes of the child’s
eyes, and ears of her ears, and tongue of her tongue. After that her
own sight became dim, and her hearing faint. It was almost as if she had
spent them on Naomi in the yearning of dove and pity. Soon afterwards
her bodily strength failed her also, and then she knew that her time had
come, and that she was to lay down her burden for ever. But her burden
had become dear, and she clung to it. She could not look upon the child
and think it, that she, who had spent her strength for her from the
first, must leave her now to other love and tending. So she betook
herself to an upper room, and gave strict orders to Fatimah and Habeebah
that Naomi was to be kept from her altogether, that sight of the child’s
helpless happy face might tempt her soul no more.

And there in her death-chamber Israel sat with her constantly, settling
his countenance steadfastly, and coming and going softly. He was more
constant than a slave, and more tender than a woman. His love was great,
but also he was eating out his big heart with remorse. The root of his
trouble was the child. He never talked of her, and neither did Ruth
dwell upon her name. Yet they thought of little else while they sat
together.

And even if they had been minded to talk of the child, what had they to
say of her? They had no memories to recall, no sweet childish sayings,
no simple broken speech, no pretty lisp--they had nothing to bring back
out of any harvest of the past of all the dear delicious wealth that
lies stored in the treasure-houses of the hearts of happy parents. That
way everything was a waste. Always, as Israel entered her room, Ruth
would say, “How is the child?” And always Israel would answer, “She is
well.” But, if at that moment Naomi’s laughter came up to them from the
patio, where she played with Ali, they would cover their faces and be
silent.

It was a melancholy parting. No one came near them--neither Moor
nor Jew, neither Rabbi nor elder. The idle women of the Mellah would
sometimes stand outside in the street and look up at their house,
knowing that the black camel of death was kneeling at their gate. Other
company they had none. In such solitude they passed four weeks, and when
the time of the end seemed near, Israel himself read aloud the prayer
for the dying, the prayer Shema’ Yisrael, and Ruth repeated the words of
it after him.

Meantime, while Ruth lay in the upper chamber little Naomi sported and
played in the patio with Ali, but she missed her mother constantly. This
she made plain by many silent acts of helpless love that knew no way to
speak aloud. Thus she would lay flowers on the seats where her mother
had used to sit, and, if at night she found them untouched where she
had left them, her little face would fall, and her laughter die off her
lips; but if they had withered and some one had cast them into the oven,
she would laugh again and fetch other flowers from the fields, until
the house would be full of the odour of the meadow and the scent of the
hill.

And well they knew, who looked upon her then, whom she missed, and what
the question was that halted on her tongue; yet how could they answer
her? There was no way to do that until she herself knew how to ask.

But this she did on a day near to the end. It was evening, and she
was being put to bed by Habeebah, and had just risen from her innocent
pantomime of prayer beside Ali, when Israel, coming from Ruth’s chamber,
entered the children’s room. Then, touching with her hand the seat
whereon Ruth had used to sit, Naomi laid down her head on the pillow,
and then rose and lay down again, and rose yet again and rose yet again
lay down, and then came to where Israel was and stood before him. And at
that Israel knew that the soul of his helpless child had asked him, as
plainly as words of the tongue can speak, how often she should lie to
sleep at night and rise to play in the morning before her mother came to
her again.

The tears gushed into his eyes, and he left the children and returned to
his wife’s chamber.

“Ruth,” he cried, “call the child to you, I beseech you!”

“No, no, no!” cried Ruth.

“Let her come to you and touch you and kiss you, and be with you before
it is too late,” said Israel. “She misses you, and fills the house with
flowers for you. It breaks my heart to see her.”

“It will break mine also,” said Ruth.

But she consented that Naomi should be called, and Fatimah was sent to
fetch her.

The sun was setting, and through the window which looked out to the
west, over the river and the orange orchards and the palpitating plains
beyond, its dying rays came into the room in a bar of golden light. It
fell at that instant on Ruth’s face, and she was white and wasted. And
through the other window of the room, which looked out over the Mellah
into the town, and across the market-place to the mosque and to the
battery on the hill, there came up from the darkening streets below the
shuffle of the feet of a crowd and the sound of many voices. The Jews
of Tetuan were trooping back to their own little quarter, that their
Moorish masters might lock them into it for the night.

Naomi was already in bed, and Fatimah brought her away in her
nightdress. She seemed to know where she was to be taken, for she
laughed as Fatimah held her by the hand, and danced as she was led to
her mother’s chamber. But when she was come to the door of it, suddenly
her laughter ceased, and her little face sobered, as if something in the
close abode of pain had troubled the senses that were left to her.

It is, perhaps, the most touching experience of the deaf and blind that
no greeting can ever welcome them. When Naomi stood like a little white
vision at the threshold of the room, Israel took her hand in silence,
and drew her up to the pillow of the bed where her mother rested, and in
silence Ruth brought the child to her bosom.

For a moment Naomi seemed to be perplexed. She touched her mother’s
fingers, and they were changed, for they had grown thin and long. Then
she felt her face, and that was changed also, for it was become withered
and cold. And, missing the grasp of one and the smile of the other, she
first turned her little head aside as one that listens closely, and then
gently withdrew herself from the arms that held her.

Ruth had watched her with eyes that overflowed, and now she burst into
sobs outright.

“The child does not know me!” she cried. “Did I not tell you it would
break my heart?”

“Try her again,” said Israel; “try her again.”

Ruth devoured her tears, and called on Fatimah to bring the child back
to her side. Then, loosening the necklace that was about her own neck,
she bound it about the neck of Naomi, and also the bracelets that were
on her wrists she unclasped and clasped them on the wrists of the child.
This she did that Naomi might remember the hands that had been kind to
her always. But when the child felt the ornaments she seemed only to
know, by the quick instinct of a girl, that she was decked out bravely,
and giving no thought to Ruth, who waited and watched for the grasp of
recognition and the kiss of joy, she withdrew herself again from her
mother’s arms, and bounded into the middle of the room, and suddenly
began to laugh and to dance.

The sun’s dying light, which had rested on Ruth’s wasted face, now
glistened and sparkled on the jewels of the child, and glowed on
her blind eyes, and gleamed on her fair hair, and reddened her white
nightdress, while she danced and laughed to her mother’s death. Nothing
did the child know of death, any more than Adam himself before Abel was
slain, and it was almost as if a devil out of hell had entered into her
innocent heart and possessed it, that she might make a mock of the dying
of the dearest friend she had known on earth.

On and on she danced, to no measure and no time, and not with a child’s
uncertain step which breaks down at motion as its tongue breaks down
at speech, but wildly and deliriously. The room was darkening fast, but
still across the nether end, by the foot of the bed, streamed the dull
red bar of sunlight with the little red figure leaping and prancing and
laughing in the midst of it.

With an awful cry Ruth fell back on the pillow and turned her eyes to
the wall. The black woman dropped her head that she might not see. And
Israel covered his face and groaned in his tearless agony, “O Lord God,
long hast Thou chastised me with whips, and now I am chastised with
scorpions!”

Ruth recovered herself quickly. “Bring her to me again!” she faltered;
and once more Fatimah brought Naomi back to the bedside. Then, embracing
and kissing the child, and seeming to forget in the torment of her
trouble that Naomi could not hear her, she cried, “It’s your mother,
Naomi! your mother, darling, though so sick and changed! Don’t you know
her, Naomi? Your mother, your own mother, sweet one, your dear mother
who loves you so, and must leave you now and see you no more!”

Now what it was in that wild plea that touched the consciousness of the
child at last, only God Himself can say. But first Naomi’s cheeks grew
pale at the embrace of the arms that held her, and then they reddened,
and then her little nervous fingers grasped at Ruth’s hands again, and
then her little lips trembled, and then, at length, she flung herself
along Ruth’s bosom and nestled close in her embrace.

Ruth fell back on her pillow now with a cry of Joy; the black woman
stood and wept by the wall and Israel, unable to bear up his heart any
longer was melted and unmanned. The sun had gone down, and the room was
darkening rapidly, for the twilight in that land is short; the streets
were quiet, and the mooddin of the neighbouring minaret was chanting in
the silence, “God is great, God is great!”

After awhile the little one fell asleep at her mother’s bosom, and,
seeing this, Fatimah would have lifted her away and carried her back
to her own bed; but Ruth said, “No; leave her, let me have her with me
while I may.”

“No one shall take her from you,” said Israel.

Then she gazed down at the child’s face and said, “It is hard to leave
her and never once to have heard her voice.”

“That is the bitterest cup of all,” said Israel.

“I shall not return to her,” said Ruth, “but she shall come to me, and
then, perhaps--who knows?--perhaps in the resurrection I shall hear it.”

Israel made no answer.

Ruth gazed down at the child again, and said, “My helpless darling! Who
will care for you when I am gone?”

“Rest, rest, and sleep!” said Israel.

“Ah, yes, I know,” said Ruth. “How foolish of me! You are her father,
and you love her also. Yet promise me--promise--”

“For love and tending she shall never lack,” said Israel. “And now lie
you still, my dearest; lie still and sleep.”

She stretched out her hand to him. “Yes, that was what I meant,” she
said, and smiled. Then a shadow crossed her face in the gloom. “But when
I am gone,” she said, “will Naomi ever know that her mother who is dead
had wronged her?”

“You have never wronged her,” said Israel. “Have done, oh, have done!”

“God punished us for our prayer, my husband,” said Ruth.

“Peace, peace!” said Israel.

“But God is good,” said Ruth, “and surely He will not afflict our child
much longer.”

“Hush! Hush! You will awaken her,” said Israel, not thinking what he
said. “Now lie still and sleep, dearest. You are tired also.”

She lay quiet for a time, gazing, while the light remained, into the
face of the sleeping child, and listening, when the light failed, to her
gentle breathing. Then she babbled and crooned over her with a childish
joy. “Yes, yes, father is right, and mother must lie quiet--very quiet,
and so her little Naomi will sleep long--very long, and wake happy and
well in the morning. How bonny she will look! How fresh and rosy!”

She paused a moment. Her laboured breathing came quick and fast. “But
shall I be here to see her? shall I?”

She paused again, and then, as though to banish thought, she began to
sing in a low voice that was like a moan. Presently her singing ceased,
and she spoke again, but this time in broken whispers.

“How soft and glossy her hair is! I wonder if Fatimah will remember to
wash it every day. She should twist it around her fingers to keep it in
pretty curls. . . . Oh, why did God make my child so beautiful?. . . .
Dear me, her morning frock wanted stitching at the sleeves, it’s a
chance if Habeebah has seen to it. Then there’s her underclothing. . . .
Will she be deaf and blind and dumb always? I wonder if I shall see her
when I. . . . They say that angels are sent. . . . Yes, yes, that’s it,
when I am there--there--I will go to God and say, ‘O Lord! my little
girl whom I have left behind, she is. . . . You would never think, O
Lord, how many things may happen to one like her. Let me go--only let me
watch over her--O Lord, let me be her guar--’”

Her weakness had conquered her, and she was quiet at last. Israel sat in
silence by the post of the bed. His heart was surging itself out of his
choking breast. The black woman stood somewhere by the wall. After a
time Ruth seemed to awake as from sleep. She was in great excitement.

“Israel, Israel!” she cried in a voice of joy, “I have seen a vision. It
was Naomi. She was no longer deaf and blind and dumb. She was grown to
be a woman, but I knew her instantly. Not a woman either, but a young
maiden, and so beautiful, so beautiful! Yes, and she could see and hear
and speak.”

Israel thought Ruth had become delirious, and he tried to soothe her,
but her agitation was not to be overcome. “The Lord hath seen our
tears at last,” she cried. “He has put our sin beneath His feet. We are
forgiven. It will be well with the child yet.”

Israel did not try to gainsay her, and at sight and sound of her joy,
seeing it so beautiful, yet thinking it so vain, he could not help at
last but weep. Presently she became quiet again, and then again, after a
little while, she woke as from a sleep.

“I am ready now,” she said in a whisper, “quite ready, sweet Heaven,
quite, quite ready now.”

Then with her one free hand she felt in the darkness for Israel, where
he sat beside her, and touching his forehead she smoothed it, and said
very softly, “Farewell, my husband!”

And Israel answered her, “Farewell!”

“Good-night!” she whispered.

And Israel drew down her hand from his forehead to his lips and sobbed,
and said, “Good-night, beloved!”

Then she put her white lips to the child’s blind eyes, and at that
moment the spirit of the Lord came to her, and the Lord took her, and
she died.

When lamps had been brought into the room, and Fatimah saw that the end
had come, she would have lifted Naomi from Ruth’s bosom, but the child
awoke as she was being moved, and clasped her little fingers about the
dead mother’s neck and covered the mouth with kisses. And when she felt
that the lips did not answer to her lips, and that the arms which had
held her did not hold her any longer, but fell away useless, she clung
the closer, and tears started to her eyes.



CHAPTER V

RUTH’S BURIAL


The people of Tetuan were not melted towards Israel by the depth of his
sorrow and the breadth of shadow that lay upon him. By noon of the day
following the night of Ruth’s death, Israel knew that he was to be left
alone. It was a rule of the Mellah that on notice being given of a death
in their quarter, the clerk of the synagogue should publish it at the
first service thereafter, in order that a body of men, called the Hebra
Kadisha of Kabranim, the Holy Society of Buriers, might straightway make
arrangements for burial. Early prayers had been held in the synagogue
at eight o’clock that morning, and no one had yet come near to Israel’s
house. The men of the Hebra were going about their ordinary occupations.
They knew nothing of Ruth’s death by official announcement. The clerk
had not published it. Israel remembered with bitterness that notice
of it had not been sent. Nevertheless, the fact was known throughout
Tetuan. There was not a water-carrier in the market-place but had taken
it to each house he called at, and passed it to every man he met. Little
groups of idle Jewish women had been many hours congregated in the
streets outside, talking of it in whispers and looking up at the
darkened windows with awe. But the synagogue knew nothing of it.
Israel had omitted the customary ceremony, and in that omission lay the
advantage of his enemies. He must humble himself and send to them. Until
he did so they would leave him alone.

Israel did not send. Never once since the birth of Naomi had he crossed
the threshold of the synagogue. He would not cross it now, whether in
body or in spirit. But he was still a Jew, with Jewish customs, if he
had lost the Jewish faith, and it was one of the customs of the Jews
that a body should be buried within twenty-four hours, at farthest, from
the time of death. He must do something immediately. Some help must be
summoned. What help could it be?

It was useless to think of the Muslimeen. No believer would lend a hand
to dig a grave for an unbeliever, or to make apparel for his dead. It
was just as idle to think of the Jews. If the synagogue knew nothing of
this burial, no Jew in the Mellah would be found so poor that he would
have need to know more. And of Christians of any sort or condition there
were none in all Tetuan.

The gall of Israel’s heart rose to his throat. Was he to be left alone
with his dead wife? Did his enemies wish to see him howk out her grave
with his own hands? Or did they expect him to come to them with bowed
forehead and bended knee? Either way their reckoning was a mistake.
They might leave him terribly and awfully alone--alone in his hour of
mourning even as they had left him alone in his hour of rejoicing, when
he had married the dear soul who was dead. But his strength and energy
they should not crush: his vital and intellectual force they should
not wither away. Only one thing they could do to touch him--they could
shrivel up his last impulse of sweet human sympathy. They were doing it
now.

When Israel had put matters to himself so, he despatched a message
to the Governor at the Kasbah, and received, in answer, six State
prisoners, fettered in pairs, under the guard of two soldiers.

The burial took place within the limit of twenty-four hours prescribed
by Jewish custom. It was twilight when the body was brought down from
the upper room to the patio. There stood the coffin on a trestle that
had been raised for it on chairs standing back to back. And there, too,
sat Israel, with Naomi and little black Ali beside him.

Israel’s manner was composed; his face was as firm as a rock, and
his dress was more costly than Tetuan had ever seen him wear before.
Everything that related to the burial he had managed himself, down to
the least or poorest detail. But there was nothing poor about it in
the larger sense. Israel was a rich man now, and he set no value on his
riches except to subdue the fate that had first beaten him down and to
abash the enemies who still menaced him. Nothing was lacking that money
could buy in Tetuan to make this burial an imposing ceremony. Only one
thing it wanted--it wanted mourners, and it had but one.

Unlike her father, little Naomi was visibly excited. She ran to and fro,
clutched at Israel’s clothes and seemed to look into his face, clasped
the hand of little Ali and held it long as if in fear. Whether she knew
what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or
sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the
presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah
brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black
women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke
away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her
little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need
to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept back in
dread to her father’s side.

“God be gracious to my father, look at that,” whispered Fatimah.

“My child, my poor child,” said Israel, “is there but one thing in life
that speaks to you? And is that death? Oh, little one, little one!”

It was a strange procession which then passed out of the patio. Four of
the prisoners carried the coffin on their shoulders, walking in pairs
according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger
had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had
sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them,
and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep,
rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two
remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand--the
right arm, as well as the right leg, being chained. On either side was a
soldier, carrying a lighted lantern, which burnt small and feeble in the
twilight, and last of all came Israel himself, unsupported and alone.
Thus they passed through the little crowd of idlers that had congregated
at the door, through the streets of the Mellah and out into the
marketplace, and up the narrow lane that leads to the chief town gate.

There is something in the very nature of power that demands homage, and
the people of Tetuan could not deny it to Israel. As the procession went
through the town they cleared a way for it, and they were silent until
it had gone. Within the gate of the Mellah, a shocket was killing fowls
and taking his tribute of copper coins, but he stopped his work and fell
back as the procession approached. A blind beggar crouching at the other
side of the gate was reciting passages of the Koran, and two Arabs close
at his elbow were wrangling over a game at draughts which they were
playing by the light of a flare, but both curses and Koran ceased as the
procession passed under the arch. In the market-place a Soosi juggler
was performing before a throng of laughing people, and a story-teller
was shrieking to the twang of his ginbri; but the audience of the
juggler broke up as the procession appeared, and the ginbri of the
storyteller was no more heard. The hammering in the shops of
the gunsmiths was stopped, and the tinkling of the bells of the
water-carriers was silenced. Mules bringing wood from the country were
dragged out of the path, and the town asses, with their panniers full of
street-filth, were drawn up by the wall. From the market-place and out
of the shops, out of the houses and out of the mosque itself, the people
came trooping in crowds, and they made a long close line on either side
of the course which the procession must take. And through this avenue
of onlookers the strange company made its way--the two prisoners
bearing the plumes, the four others bearing the coffin, the two soldiers
carrying the lanterns, and Israel last of all, unsupported and alone.
Nothing was heard in the silence of the people but the tramp of the feet
of the six men, and the clank of their chains.

The light of the lanterns was on the faces of some of them, and every
one knew them for what they were. It was on the face of Israel also, yet
he did not flinch. His head was held steadily upward; he looked neither
to the right nor to the left, but strode firmly along.

The Jewish cemetery was outside the town walls, and before the
procession came to it the darkness had closed in. Its flat white
tombstones, all pointing toward Jerusalem, lay in the gloom like a flock
of sheep asleep among the grass. It had no gate but a gap in the fence,
and no fence but a hedge of the prickly pear and the aloe.

Israel had opened a grave for Ruth beside the grave of the old rabbi
her father. He had asked no man’s permission to do so, but if no one had
helped at that day’s business, neither had any one dared to hinder. And
when the coffin was set down by the grave-side no ceremony did Israel
forget and none did he omit. He repeated the Kaddesh, and cut the notch
in his kaftan; he took from his breast the little linen bag of the white
earth of the land of promise and laid it under the head; he locked a
padlock and flung away the key. Last of all, when the body had been
taken out of the coffin and lowered to its long home, he stepped in
after it, and called on one of the soldiers to lend him a lantern. And
then, kneeling at the foot of his dead wife, he touched her with both
his hands, and spoke these words in a clear, firm voice, looking down
at her where she lay in the veil that she had used to wear in the
synagogue, and speaking to her as though she heard: “Ruth, my wife, my
dearest, for the cruel wrong which I did you long ago when I suffered
you to marry me, being a man such as I was, under the ban of my people,
forgive me now, my beloved, and ask God to forgive me also.”

The dark cemetery, the six prisoners in their clanking irons, the two
soldiers with their lanterns the open grave, and this strong-hearted
man kneeling within it, that he might do his last duty, according to the
custom of his race and faith, to her whom he had wronged and should meet
no more until the resurrection itself reunited them! The traffic of the
streets had begun again by this time, and between the words which Israel
had spoken the low hum of many voices had come over the dark town walls.

The six prisoners went back to the Kasbah with joyful hearts, for
each carried with him a paper which procured his freedom on the day
following. But Israel returned to his home with a soured and darkened
mind. As he had plucked his last handful of the grass, and flung it over
his shoulder, saying, “They shall spring in the cities as the grass in
the earth,” he had asked himself what it mattered to him though all the
world were peopled, now that she, who had been all the world to him, was
dead. God had left him as a lonely pilgrim in a dreary desert. Only one
glimpse of human affection had he known as a man, and here it was taken
from him for ever.

And when he remembered Naomi, he quarrelled with God again. She was
a helpless exile among men, a creature banished from all human
intercourse, a living soul locked in a tabernacle of flesh. Was it a
good God who had taken the mother from such a child--the child from such
a mother? Israel was heart-smitten, and his soul blasphemed. It was not
God but the devil that ruled the world. It was not justice but evil that
governed it.

Thus did this outcast man rebel against God, thinking of the child’s
loss and of his own; but nevertheless by the child itself he was yet to
be saved from the devil’s snare, and the ways wherein this sweet flower,
fresh from God’s hand, wrought upon his heart to redeem it were very
strange and beautiful.



CHAPTER VI

THE SPIRIT-MAID


The promise which Israel made to Ruth at her death, that Naomi should
not lack for love and tending, he faithfully fulfilled. From that time
forward he became as father and mother both to the child.

At the outset of his charge he made a survey of her condition, and found
it more terrible than imagination of the mind could think or words of
the tongue express. It was easy to say that she was deaf and dumb and
blind, but it was hard to realise what so great an affliction implied.
It implied that she was a little human sister standing close to the rest
of the family of man, yet very far away from them. She was as much apart
as if she had inhabited a different sphere. No human sympathy could
reach her in joy or pain and sorrow. She had no part to play in life. In
the midst of a world of light she was in a land of darkness, and she was
in a world of silence in the midst of a land of sweet sounds. She was a
living and buried soul.

And of that soul itself what did Israel know? He knew that it had
memory, for Naomi had remembered her mother; and he knew that it had
love, for she had pined for Ruth, and clung to her. But what were love
and memory without sight and speech? They were no more than a magnet
locked in a casket--idle and useless to any purposes of man or the
world.

Thinking of this, Israel realised for the first time how awful was the
affliction of his motherless girl. To be blind was to be afflicted once,
but to be both blind and deaf was not only to be afflicted twice, but
twice ten thousand times, and to be blind and deaf and dumb was not
merely to be afflicted thrice, but beyond all reckonings of human
speech.

For though Naomi had been blind, yet, if she could have had hearing, her
father might have spoken with her, and if she had sorrows he must have
soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
souls: alive, and yet dead?

Thus, realising Naomi’s condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
silence should be her speech for ever.

Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. “Yes” was a mystery
that could not at first be revealed to her, and “No” was a problem
beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and frowns were useless to teach
her. No discipline could be addressed to her mind or heart. Except mere
bodily restraint, no control could be imposed upon her. She was swayed
by her impulses alone.

Israel did not despair. If he was broken down today he strengthened his
hands for tomorrow. At length he had got so far, after a world of toil
and thought, that Naomi knew when he patted her head that it was for
approval, and when he touched her hand it was for assent. Then he
stopped very suddenly. His hope had not drooped, and neither had his
energy failed, but the conviction had fastened upon him that such effort
in his case must be an offence against Heaven. Naomi was not merely an
infirm creature from the left hand of Nature; she was an afflicted being
from the right hand of God. She was a living monument of sin that was
not her own. It was useless to go farther. The child must be left where
God had placed her.

But meanwhile, if Naomi lacked the senses of the rest of the human
kind, she seemed to communicate with Nature by other organs than they
possessed. It was as if the spiritual world itself must have taught her,
and from that source alone could she have imbibed her power. To tell of
all she could do to guide her steps, and to minister to her pleasures,
and to cherish her affections, would be to go beyond the limit of
belief. Truly it seemed as if Naomi, being blind with her bodily eyes,
could yet look upon a light that no one else could see, and, being deaf
with her bodily ears, could yet listen to voices that no one else could
hear.

Thus, if she came skipping through the corridor of the patio, she knew
when any one approached her, for she would hold out her hands and stop.
Nay; but she knew also who it would be as well as if her eyes or ears
had taught her; for always, if it was her father, she reached out her
hands to take his left hand in both of hers, and then she pressed it
against her cheek; and always, if it was little Ali, she curved her arms
to encircle his neck; and always, if it was Fatimah, she leapt up to
her bosom; and always, if it was Habeebah, she passed her by. Did she go
with Ali into the streets, she knew the Mellah gate from the gate of
the town, and the narrow lanes from the open Sok. Did she pass the lofty
mosque in the market-place, she knew it from the low shops that nestled
under and behind and around. Did a troop of mules and camels come near
her, she knew them from a crowd of people; and did she pass where two
streets crossed, she would stand and face both ways.

And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around
Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah
and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river
under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and
even some of their rocky gorges. She could find her way among them all
without help or guidance, and no control could any one impose upon her
to keep her out of the way of harm. While Ali was a little fellow he was
her constant companion, always ready for any adventure that her unquiet
heart suggested; but when he grew to be a boy, and was sent to school
every day early and late, she would fare forth alone save for a tiny
white goat which her father had bought to be another playfellow.

And because feeling was sight to her, and touch was hearing, and the
crown of her head felt the winds of the heavens and the soles of her
feet felt the grass of the fields, she loved best to go bareheaded
whether the sun was high or the air was cool, and barefooted also, from
the rising of the morning until the coming of the stars. So, casting off
her slippers and the great straw hat which a Jewish maiden wears, and
clad in her white woollen shawl, wrapped loosely about her in folds of
airy grace, and with the little goat going before her, though she could
neither see nor hear it, she would climb the hill beyond the battery,
and stand on the summit, like a spirit poised in air. She could see
nothing of the green valley then stretched before her, or of the white
town lying below, with its domes and minarets, but she seemed to exult
in her lofty place, and to drink new life from the rush of mighty winds
about her. Then coming back to the dale, she would seem, to those who
looked up at her, with fear and with awe, to leap as the goat leapt
in the rocky places; and as a bird sweeps over the grass with wings
outstretched, so with her arms spread out, and her long fair hair flying
loose, she would sweep down the hill, as though her very tiptoes did not
touch it.

By what power she did these things no man could tell, except it were
the power of the spiritual world itself; but the distemper of the mind,
which loved such dangers, increased upon her as she grew from a child
into a maid, and it found new ways of strangeness. Thus, in the spring,
when the rain fell heavily, or in the winter, when the great winds were
abroad, or in the summer, when the lightning lightened and the thunder
thundered, her restless spirit seemed to be roused to sympathetic
tumults, and if she could escape the eyes that watched her she would run
and race in the tempest, and her eyes would be aglitter, and laughter
would be on her lips. Then Israel himself would go out to find her, and,
having found her in the pelting storm without covering on her head or
shoes on her feet, he would fetch her home by the hand, and as they
passed through the streets together his forehead would be bowed and his
eyes bent down.

But it was not always that Naomi made her father ashamed. More often her
joyful spirit cheered him, for above all things else she was a creature
of joy. A circle of joy seemed to surround her always. Her heart in its
darkness was full of radiance. As she grew her comeliness increased,
though this was strange and touching in her beauty, that her face did
not become older with her years, but was still the face of a child, with
a child’s expression of sweetness through the bloom and flush of early
maidenhood. Her love of flowers increased also, and the sense of smell
seemed to come to her, for she filled the house with all fragrant
flowers in their season, twining them in wreaths about the white pillars
of the patio, and binding them in rings around the brown water-jars
that stood in it. And with the girl’s expanding nature her love of dress
increased as well; but it was not a young maid’s love of lovely things;
it was a wild passion for light, loose garments that swayed and swirled
in native grace about her. Truly she was a spirit of joy and gladness.
She was happy as a day in summer, and fresh as a dewy morning in spring.
The ripple of her laughter was like sunshine. A flood of sunshine seemed
to follow in the air wheresoever she went. And certainly for Israel, her
father, she was as a sunbeam gathering sunshine into his lonely house.

Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel
in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that
the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling
could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and
many throbs of anguish with it. For often it happened, and especially
at seasons when no winds were stirring, and blank peace and a doleful
silence haunted the air, that Naomi would seem to fall into a sick
longing from causes that were beyond Israel’s power to fathom. Then her
sweet face would sadden, and her beautiful blind eyes would fill, and
her pretty laughter would echo no more through the house. And sometimes,
in the dead of the night, she would rise from her bed and go through
the dark corridors, for darkness and light were as one to her, until she
came to Israel’s room, and he would awake from his sleep to find her,
like a little white vision, standing by his bedside. What she wanted
there he could never know, for neither had he power to ask nor she to
answer, whether she were sick or in pain, or whether in her sleep she
had seen a face from the invisible world, and heard a voice that called
her away, or whether her mother’s arms had seemed to be about her once
again and then to be torn from her afresh, and she had come to him on
awakening in her trouble, not knowing what it is to dream, but thinking
all evil dreams to be true fact and new sorrow. So, with a sigh, he
would arise and light his lamp and lead her back to her bed, and more
scalding than the tears that would be standing in Naomi’s eyes would be
the hot drops that would gush into his own.

“My poor darling,” he would say, “can you not tell me your trouble, that
I may comfort you? No, no, she cannot tell me, and I cannot comfort her.
My darling, my darling.”

Most of all when such things befell would Israel long for some miracle
out of heaven to find a way to the little maiden’s mind that she might
ask and answer and know, yet he dared not to pray for it, for still
greater than his pity for the child was his fear of the wrath of God.
And out of this fear there came to him at length an awful and terrible
thought: though so severed on earth, his child and he, yet before the
bar of judgment they would one day be brought together, and then how
should it stand with her soul?

Naomi knew nothing of God, having no way of speech with man. Would God
condemn her for that, and cast her out for ever? No, no, no! God would
not ask her for good works in the land of silence, and for labour in the
land of night. She had no eyes to see God’s beautiful world, and no ears
to hear His holy word. God had created her so, and He would not destroy
what He had made. Far rather would He look with love and pity on His
little one, so long and sorely tried on earth, and send her at last to
be a blessed saint in heaven.

Israel tried to comfort himself so, but the effort was vain. He was a
Jew to the inmost fibre of his being, and he answered himself out of his
own mouth that it was his own sinful wish, and not God’s will, that
had sent Naomi into the world as she was. Then, on the day of the great
account, how should he answer to her for her soul?

Visions stood up before him of endless retribution for the soul that
knew not God. These were the most awful terrors of his sleepless nights,
but at length peace came to him, for he saw his path of duty. It was his
duty to Naomi that he should tell her of God and reveal the word of the
Lord to her! What matter if she could not hear? Though she had senses as
the sands of the seashore, yet in the way of light the Lord alone could
lead her. What matter though she could not see? The soul was the eye
that saw God, and with bodily eyes had no man seen Him.

So every day thereafter at sunset Israel took Naomi by the hand and led
her to an upper room, the same wherein her mother died, and, fetching
from a cupboard of the wall the Book of the Law, he read to her of
the commandments of the Lord by Moses, and of the Prophets, and of the
Kings. And while he read Naomi sat in silence at his feet, with his one
free hand in both of her hands, clasped close against her cheek.

What the little maid in her darkness thought of this custom, what
mystery it was to her and wherefore, only the eye that looks into
darkness could see; but it was so at length that as soon as the sun had
set--for she knew when the sun was gone--Naomi herself would take her
father by the hand, and lead him to the upper room, and fetch the book
to his knees.

And sometimes, as Israel read, an evil spirit would seem to come to him,
and make a mock at him, and say, “The child is deaf and hears not--go
read your book in the tombs!” But he only hardened his neck and laughed
proudly. And, again, sometimes the evil spirit seemed to say, “Why waste
yourself in this misspent desire? The child is buried while she is still
alive, and who shall roll away the stone?” But Israel only answered, “It
is for the Lord to do miracles, and the Lord is mighty.”

So, great in his faith, Israel read to Naomi night after night, and when
his spirit was sore of many taunts in the day his voice would be hoarse,
and he would read the law which says, “_Thou shalt not curse the deaf,
nor put a stumbling-block before the blind._” But when his heart was
at peace his voice would be soft, and he would read of the child Samuel
sanctified to the Lord in the temple, and how the Lord called him and he
answered--

“_And it came to pass at that time, when Eli was laid down in his place,
and his eyes began to wax dim, that he could not see; and ere the lamp
of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was,
and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel, and he
answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou
calledst me. And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and
lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and
went to Eli and said, Here am I for thou didst call me. And he answered,
I called not my son; lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the
Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed to him._”

And, having finished his reading, Israel would close the book, and sing
out of the Psalms of David the psalm which says, “It is good for me that
I have been in trouble, that I may learn Thy statutes.”

Thus, night after night, when the sun was gone down, did Israel read
of the law and sing of the Psalms to Naomi, his daughter, who was both
blind and deaf. And though Naomi heard not, and neither did she see, yet
in their silent hour together there was another in their chamber always
with them--there was a third, for there was God.



CHAPTER VII

THE ANGEL IN ISRAEL’S HOUSE


When Israel had been some twenty years at Tetuan, Naomi being then
fourteen years of age, Ben Aboo, the Basha, married a Christian wife.
The woman’s name was Katrina. She was a Spaniard by birth, and had
first come to Morocco at the tail of a Spanish embassy, which travelled
through Tetuan from Ceuta to the Sultan at Fez. What her belongings
were, and what her antecedents had been, no one appeared to know, nor
did Ben Aboo himself seem to care. She answered all his present needs in
her own person, which was ample in its proportions and abundant in its
charms.

In marrying Ben Aboo, the wily Katrina imposed two conditions. The first
was, that he should put away the full Mohammedan complement of
four Moorish wives, whom he had married already as well as the many
concubines that he had annexed in his way through life, and now kept
lodged in one unquiet nest in the women’s hidden quarter of the Palace.
The second condition was, that she herself should never be banished
to such seclusion, but, like the wife of any European governor, should
openly share the state of her husband.

Ben Aboo was in no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan,
and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to
abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a
prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she
insisted on a public marriage.

They were married according to the rites of the Catholic Church by a
Franciscan friar settled at Tangier, and the marriage festival lasted
six days. Great was the display, and lavish the outlay. Every morning
the cannon of the fort fired a round of shot from the hill, every
evening the tribesmen from the mountains went through their feats of
powder-play in the market-place, and every night a body of Aissawa from
Mequinez yelled and shrieked in the enclosure called the M’salla, near
the Bab er-Remoosh. Feasts were spread in the Kasbah, and relays of
guests from among the chief men of the town were invited daily to
partake of them.

No man dared to refuse his invitation, or to neglect the tribute of a
present, though the Moors well knew that they were lending the light
of their countenance to a brazen outrage on their faith, and though
it galled the hearts of the Jews to make merry at the marriage of a
Christian and a Muslim--no man except Israel, and he excused himself
with what grace he could, being in no mood for rejoicing, but sick with
sorrow of the heart.

The Spanish woman was not to be gainsaid. She had taken her measure of
the man, and had resolved that a servant so powerful as Israel should
pay her court and tribute before all. Therefore she caused him to be
invited again; but Israel had taken his measure of the woman, and with
some lack of courtesy he excused himself afresh.

Katrina was not yet done. She was a creature of resource, and having
heard of Naomi with strange stories concerning her, she devised a
children’s feast for the last day of the marriage festival, and
caused Ben Aboo to write to Israel a formal letter, beginning “To our
well-beloved the excellent Israel ben Oliel, Praise to the one God,”
 and setting forth that on the morrow, when the “Sun of the world” should
“place his foot in the stirrup of speed,” and gallop “from the kingdom
of shades,” the Governor would “hold a gathering of delight” for all the
children of Tetuan and he, Israel, was besought to “lighten it with the
rays of his face, rivalled only by the sun,” and to bring with him
his little daughter Naomi, whose arrival “similar to a spring breeze,”
 should “dissipate the dark night of solitude and isolation.” This
despatch written in the common cant of the people, concluded with
quotations from the Prophet on brotherly love and a significant and
more sincere assurance that the Basha would not admit of excuses “of the
thickness of a hair.”

When Israel received the missive, his anger was hot and furious. He
leapt to the conclusion that, in demanding the presence of Naomi, the
Spanish woman, who must know of the child’s condition desired only to
make a show of it. But, after a fume, he put that thought from him as
uncharitable and unwarranted, and resolved to obey the summons.

And, indeed, if he had felt any further diffidence, the sight of Naomi’s
own eagerness must have driven it away. The little maid seemed to know
that something unusual was going on. Troops of poor villagers from every
miserable quarter of the bashalic came into the town each day, beating
drums, firing long guns, driving their presents before them--bullocks,
cows, and sheep--and trying to make believe that they rejoiced and
were glad. Naomi appeared to be conscious of many tents pitched in
the marketplace, of denser crowds in the streets, and of much bustle
everywhere.

Also she seemed to catch the contagion of little Ali’s excitement. The
children of all the schools of the town, both Jewish and Moorish, had
been summoned through their Talebs to the festival; there was to be
dancing and singing and playing on musical instruments and Ali himself,
who had lately practised the kanoon--the lute, the harp--under his
teacher, was to show his skill before the Governor. Therefore, great
was the little black man’s excitement, and, in the fever of it, he would
talk to every one of the event forthcoming--to Fatima, to Habeebah, and
often to Naomi also, until the memory of her infirmity would come to
him, or perhaps the derisive laugh of his schoolfellows would stop him,
and then, thinking they were laughing at the girl, he would fall on them
like a fury, and they would scamper away.

When the great day came, Ali went off to the Kasbah with his school and
Taleb, in the long procession of many schools and many Talebs. Every
child carried a present for the rich Basha; now a boy with a goat, then
a girl with a lamb, again a poor tattered mite with a hen, all cuddling
them close like pets they must part with, yet all looking radiantly
happy in their sweet innocency, which had no alloy of pain from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.

Israel took Naomi by the hand, but no present with either of them, and
followed the children, going past the booths, the blind beggars, the
lepers, and the shrieking Arabs that lay thick about the gate, through
the iron-clamped door, and into the quadrangle, where groups of women
stood together closely covered in their blankets--the mothers and
sisters of the children, permitted to see their little ones pass into
the Kasbah, but allowed to go no farther--then down the crooked passage,
past the tiny mosque, like a closet, and the bath, like a dungeon, and
finally into the pillared patio, paved and walled with tiles.

This was the place of the festival, and it was filled already with a
great company of children, their fathers and their teachers. Moors,
Arabs, Berbers, and Jews, clad in their various costumes of white
and blue and black and red--they were a gorgeous, a voluptuous, and,
perhaps, a beautiful spectacle in the morning sunlight.

As Israel entered, with Naomi by the hand, he was conscious that every
eye was on them, and as they passed through the way that was made
for them, he heard the whispered exclamations of the people. “Shoof!”
 muttered a Moor. “See!” “It’s himself,” said a Jew. “And the child,”
 said another Jew. “Allah has smitten her,” said an Arab “Blind and
dumb and deaf,” said another Moor “God be gracious to my father!” said
another Arab.

Musicians were playing in the gallery that ran round the court, and
from the flat roof above it the women of the Governor’s hareem, not yet
dispersed, his four lawful Mohammedan wives, and many concubines, were
gazing furtively down from behind their haiks. There was a fountain in
the middle of the patio, and at the farther end of it, within an
alcove that opened out of a horseshoe arch, beneath ceilings hung with
stalactites, against walls covered with silken haities, and on Rabat
rugs of many colours, sat Ben Aboo and his Christian bride.

It was there that Israel saw the Spaniard for the first time, and at
the instant of recognition he shivered as with cold. She was a handsome
woman, but plainly a heartless one--selfish, vain, and vulgar.

Ben Aboo hailed Israel with welcomes and peace-blessings, and Katrina
drew Naomi to her side.

“So this is the little maid of whom wonderful rumours are so rife?” said
Katrina.

Israel bent his head and shuddered at seeing the child at the woman’s
feet.

“The darling is as fair as an angel,” said Katrina, and she kissed
Naomi.

The kiss seemed to Israel to smite his own cheeks like a blow.

Then the performances of the children began, and truly they made a
pretty and affecting sight; the white walls, the deep blue sky, the
black shadows of the gallery, the bright sunlight, the grown people
massed around the patio, and these sweet little faces coming and going
in the middle of it. First, a line of Moorish girls in their embroidered
hazzams dancing after their native fashion, bending and rising, twisting
and turning, but keeping their feet in the same place constantly. Then,
a line of Jewish girls in their kilted skirts dancing after the Jewish
manner tripping on their slippered toes, whirling and turning around
with rapid motions, and playing timbrels and tambourines held high above
their heads by their shapely arms and hands. Then passages of the
Koran chanted by a group of Moorish boys in their jellabs, purple and
chocolate and white, peaked above their red tarbooshes. Then a psalm by
a company of Jewish boys in their black skull-caps--a brave old song
of Zion sung by silvery young voices in an alien land. Finally, little
black Ali, led out by his teacher, with his diminutive Moorish harp in
his hands, showing no fear at all, but only a negro boy’s shy looks of
pleasure--his head aside, his eyes gleaming, his white teeth glinting,
and his face aglow.

Now down to this moment Naomi, at the feet of the woman, had been
agitated and restless, sometimes rising, then sinking back, sometimes
playing with her nervous fingers, and then pushing off her slippers.
It was as though she was conscious of the fine show which was going
forward, and knew that they were children who were making it. Perhaps
the breath of the little ones beat her on the level of her cheeks, or
perhaps the light air made by the sweep of their garments was wafted to
her sensitive body. Whatsoever the sense whereby the knowledge came to
her, clearly it was there in her flushed and twitching face, which was
full of that old hunger for child-company which Israel knew too well.

But when little Ali was brought out and he began to play on his kanoon,
his harp, it was impossible to repress Naomi’s excitement. The girl
leaped up from her place at the woman’s feet, and with the utmost
rapidity of motion she passed like a gleam of light across the patio to
the boy’s side. And, being there, she touched the harp as he played it,
and then a low cry came from her lips. Again she touched it, and her
eyes, though blind, seemed for an instant to flame like fire. Then, with
both her hands she clung to it, and with her lips and her tongue she
kissed it, while her whole body quivered like a reed in the wind.

Israel saw what she did, and his very soul trembled at the sight with
wild thoughts that did not dare to take the name of hope. As well as he
could in the confusion of his own senses he stepped forward to draw the
little maiden back but the wife of the Governor called on him to leave
her.

“Leave her!” she cried. “Let us see what the child will do!”

At that moment Ali’s playing came to as end, and the boy let the harp
pass to Naomi’s clinging fingers, and then, half sitting, half kneeling
on the ground beside it, the girl took it to herself. She caressed it,
she patted it with her hand, she touched its strings, and then a faint
smile crossed her rosy lips. She laid her cheek against it and touched
its strings again, and then she laughed aloud. She flung off her
slippers and the garment that covered her beautiful arms, and laid
her pure flesh against the harp wheresoever her flesh might cling, and
touched its strings once more, and then her very heart seemed to laugh
with delight.

Now, what is to follow will seem to be no better than a superstitious
saying, but true it is, nevertheless, and simple sooth for all it sounds
so strange, that though Naomi was deaf as the grave, and had never yet
heard music, and though she was untaught and knew nothing of the notes
of a harp to strike them yet she swept the strings to strange sounds
such as no man had ever listened to before and none could follow.

It was not music that the little maiden made to her ear, but only motion
to her body, and just as the deaf who are deaf alone are sometimes found
to take pleasure in all forms of percussion, and to derive from them
some of the sensations of sound--the trembling of the air after thunder,
the quivering of the earth after cannon, and the quaking of vast walls
after the ringing of mighty bells--so Naomi, who was blind as well and
had no sense save touch, found in her fingers, which had gathered up the
force of all the other senses, the power to reproduce on this instrument
of music the movement of things that moved about her--the patter of the
leaves of the fig-tree in the patio of her home, the swirl of the great
winds on the hill-top, the plash of rain on her face, and the rippling
of the levanter in her hair.

This was all the witchery of Naomi’s playing, yet, because every emotion
in Nature had its harmony, so there was harmony of some wild sort in the
music that was struck by the girl’s fingers out of the strings of the
harp. But, more than her music, which was perhaps, only a rhapsody of
sound, was the frenzy of the girl herself as she made it. She lifted
her head like a bird, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, and as she
played, she laughed again and again.

There was something fascinating and magical in the spectacle of the
beautiful fair face aglow with joy, the rounded limbs (visible through
the robes) clinging to the sides of the harp, and the delicate white
fingers flying across the strings. There was something gruesome and
awful, as well, for the face of the girl was blind, and her ears heard
nothing of the sounds that her fingers were making.

Every eye was on her, and in the wide circle around every mouth was
agape. And when those who looked on and listened had recovered from
their first surprise, very strange and various were the whispered words
they passed between them. “Where has she learnt it?” asked a Moor.
“From her master himself,” muttered a Jew. “Who is it?” asked the Moor.
“Beelzebub,” growled the Jew. “God pity me, the evil eye is on her,”
 said an Arab. “God will show,” said a Shereef from Wazzan. “They say
her mother was a childless woman, and offered petitions for Hannah’s
blessing at the tomb of Rabbi Amran.” “No,” said the Arab; “she sent her
girdle.” “Anyhow, the child is a saint,” whispered the Shereef. “No, but
a devil,” snorted the Jew.

“Brava, brava, brava!” cried the new wife of Ben Aboo, and she cheered
and laughed as the girl played. “What did I tell you?” she said, looking
toward her husband. “The child is not deaf, no, nor blind either. Oh,
it’s a brave imposture! Brava, brave!”

Still the little maiden played, but now her brow was clouded, her head
dropped, her eyelashes were downcast, and she hung over the harp and
sighed audibly.

“Good again!” cried the woman. “Very good!” and she clapped her
hands, whereupon the Arabs and the Moors, forgetting their dread, felt
constrained to follow her example, and they cheered in their wilder way,
but the Jews continued to mutter, “Beelzebub, Beelzebub!”

Israel saw it all, and at first, amid the commotion of his mind and the
confusion of his senses, his heart melted at sight of what Naomi did.
Had God opened a gateway to her soul? Were the poor wings of her spirit
to spread themselves out at last? Was this, then, the way of speech
that Heaven had given her? But hardly had Israel overflowed with the
tenderness of such thoughts when the bleating and barking of the faces
about him awakened his anger. Then, like blows on his brain, came the
cries of the wife of the Governor, who cheered this awakening of
the girl’s soul as it were no better than a vulgar show; and at that
Israel’s wrath rose to his throat.

“Brava, brava!” cried the woman again; and, turning to Israel, she said,
“You shall leave the child with me. I must have her with me always.”

Israel’s throat seemed to choke him at that word. He looked at Katrina,
and saw that she was a woman lustful of breath and vain of heart, who
had married Ben Aboo because he was rich. Then he looked at Naomi,
and remembered that her heart was clear as the water, and sweet as the
morning, and pure as the snow.

And at that moment the wife of the Governor cheered again, and again the
people echoed her, and even the women on the housetops made bold to
take up her cry with their cooing ululation. The playing had ceased, the
spell had dissolved, Naomi’s fingers had fallen from the harp, her head
had dropped into her breast, and with a sigh she had sunk forward on to
her face.

“Take her in!” said the wife of Ben Aboo, and two Arab soldiers stepped
up to where the little maiden lay. But before they had touched her
Israel strode out with swollen lips and distended nostrils.

“Stop!” he cried.

The Arabs hesitated, and looked towards their master.

“Do as you are bidden--take her in!” said Ben Aboo.

“Stop!” cried Israel again, in a loud voice that rang through the court.
Then, parting the Arabs with a sweep of his arms, he picked up the
unconscious maiden, and faced about on the new wife of Ben Aboo.

“Madam,” he cried, “I, Israel ben Oliel, may belong to the Governor, but
my child belongs to me.”

So saying, he passed out of the court, carrying the girl in his arms,
and in the dead silence and blank stupor of that moment none seemed to
know what he had done until he was gone.

Israel went home in his anger; but nevertheless, out of this event he
found courage in his heart to begin his task again. Let his enemies
bleat and bark “Beelzebub,” yet the child was an angel, though suffering
for his sin, and her soul was with God. She was a spirit, and the songs
she had played were the airs of paradise. But, comforting himself so,
Israel remembered the vision of Ruth, wherein Naomi had recovered her
powers. He had put it from him hitherto as the delirium of death, but
would the Lord yet bring it to pass? Would God in His mercy some day
take the angel out of his house, though so strangely gifted, so radiant
and beautiful and joyful, and give him instead for the hunger of his
heart as a man this sweet human child, his little, fair-haired Naomi,
though helpless and simple and weak?



CHAPTER VIII

THE VISION OF THE SCAPEGOAT


Israel’s instinct had been sure: the coming of Katrina proved to be
the beginning of his end. He kept his office, but he lost his power. No
longer did he work his own will in Tetuan; he was required to work the
will of the woman. Katrina’s will was an evil one, and Israel got the
blame of it, for still he seemed to stand in all matters of tribute and
taxation between the people and the Governor. It galled him to take the
woman’s wages, but it vexed him yet more to do her work. Her work was to
burden the people with taxes beyond all their power of paying; her wages
was to be hated as the bane of the bashalic, to be clamoured against
as the tyrant of Tetuan, and to be ridiculed by the very offal of the
streets.

One day a gang of dirty Arabs in the market-place dressed up a blind
beggar in clothes such as Israel wore, and sent him abroad through the
town to beg as one that was destitute and in a miserable condition. But
nothing seemed to move Israel to pity. Men were cast into prison for no
reason save that they were rich, and the relations of such as were there
already were allowed to redeem them for money, so that no felon suffered
punishment except such as could pay nothing. People took fright and fled
to other cities. Israel’s name became a curse and a reproach throughout
Barbary.

Yet all this time the man’s soul was yearning with pity for the people.
Since the death of Ruth his heart had grown merciful. The care of the
child had softened him. It had brought him to look on other children
with tenderness, and looking tenderly on other children had led him to
think of other fathers with compassion. Young or old, powerful or weak,
mighty or mean, they were all as little children--helpless children who
would sleep together in the same bed soon.

Thinking so, Israel would have undone the evil work of earlier years;
but that was impossible now. Many of them that had suffered were
dead; some that had been cast into prison had got their last and long
discharge. At least Israel would have relaxed the rigour whereby his
master ruled, but that was impossible also. Katrina had come, and she
was a vain woman and a lover of all luxury, and she commanded Israel to
tax the people afresh. He obeyed her through three bad years; but many
a time his heart reproached him that he dealt corruptly by the poor
people, and when he saw them borrowing money for the Governor’s tributes
on their lands and houses, and when he stood by while they and their
sons were cast into prison for the bonds which they could not pay to the
usurers Abraham or Judah or Reuben, then his soul cried out against him
that he ate the bread of such a mistress.

But out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
sweetness, and out of this coming of the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo came
deliverance for Israel from the torment of his false position.

There was an aged and pious Moor in Tetuan, called Abd Allah, who was
rumoured to have made savings from his business as a gunsmith. Going to
mosque one evening, with fifteen dollars in his waistband, he unstrapped
his belt and laid it on the edge of the fountain while he washed his
feet before entering, for his back was no longer supple. Then a younger
Moor, coming to pray at the same time, saw the dollars, and snatched
them up and ran. Abd Allah could not follow the thief, so he went to the
Kasbah and told his story to the Governor.

Just at that time Ben Aboo had the Kaid of Fez on a visit to him. “Ask
him how much more he has got,” whispered the brother Kaid to Ben Aboo.

Abd Allah answered that he did not know.

“I’ll give you two hundred dollars for the chance of all he has,” the
Kaid whispered again.

“Five bees are better than a pannier of flies--done!” said Ben Aboo.

So Abd Allah was sold like a sheep and carried to Fez, and there cast
into prison on a penalty of two hundred and fifty dollars imposed upon
him on the pretence of a false accusation.

Israel sat by the Governor that day at the gate of the hall of justice,
and many poor people of the town stood huddled together in the court
outside while the evil work was done. No one heard the Kaid of Fez when
he whispered to Ben Aboo, but every one saw when Israel drew the warrant
that consigned the gunsmith to prison, and when he sealed it with the
Governor’s seal.

Abd Allah had made no savings, and, being too old for work, he had lived
on the earnings of his son. The son’s name was Absalam (Abd es-Salem),
and he had a wife whom he loved very tenderly, and one child, a boy of
six years of age. Absalam followed his father to Fez, and visited him in
prison. The old man had been ordered a hundred lashes, and the flesh was
hanging from his limbs. Absalam was great of heart, and, in pity of his
father’s miserable condition he went to the Governor and begged that the
old man might be liberated, and that he might be imprisoned instead.
His petition was heard. Abd Allah was set free, Absalam was cast into
prison, and the penalty was raised from two hundred and fifty dollars to
three hundred.

Israel heard of what had happened, and he hastened to Ben Aboo, in great
agitation, intending to say “Pay back this man’s ransom, in God’s name,
and his children and his children’s children will live to bless you.”
 But when he got to the Kasbah, Katrina was sitting with her husband, and
at sight of the woman’s face Israel’s tongue was frozen.

Absalam had been the favourite of his neighbours among all the gunsmiths
of the market-place, and after he had been three months at Fez they
made common cause of his calamities, sold their goods at a sacrifice,
collected the three hundred dollars of his fine, bought him out of
prison, and went in a body through the gate to meet him upon his return
to Tetuan. But his wife had died in the meantime of fear and privation,
and only his aged father and his little son were there to welcome him.

“Friends,” he said to his neighbours standing outside the walls, “what
is the use of sowing if you know not who will reap?”

“No use, no use!” answered several voices.

“If God gives you anything, this man Israel takes it away,” said
Absalam.

“True, true! Curse him! Curse his relations!” cried the others.

“Then why go back into Tetuan?” said Absalam.

“Tangier is no better,” said one. “Fez is worse,” said another. “Where
is there to go?” said a third.

“Into the plains,” said Absalam--“into the plains and into the
mountains, for they belong to God alone.”

That word was like the flint to the tinder.

“They who have least are richest, and they that have nothing are best
off of all,” said Absalam, and his neighbours shouted that it was so.

“God will clothe us as He clothes the fields,” said Absalam, “and feed
our children as He feeds the birds.”

In three days’ time ten shops in the market-place, on the side of the
Mosque, were sold up and closed, and the men who had kept them were gone
away with their wives and children to live in tents with Absalam on the
barren plains beyond the town.

When Israel heard of what had been done he secretly rejoiced; but Ben
Aboo was in a commotion of fear, and Katrina was fierce with anger, for
the doctrine which Absalam had preached to his neighbours outside the
walls was not his own doctrine merely, but that of a great man lately
risen among the people, called Mohammed of Mequinez, nicknamed by his
enemies Mohammed the Third.

“This madness is spreading,” said Ben Aboo.

“Yes,” said Katrina; “and if all men follow where these men lead, who
will supply the tables of Kaids and Sultans?”

“What can I do with them?” said Ben Aboo.

“Eat them up,” said Katrina.

Ben Aboo proceeded to put a literal interpretation upon his wife’s
counsel. With a company of cavalry he prepared to follow Absalam and his
little fellowship, taking Israel along with him to reckon their taxes,
that he might compel them to return to Tetuan, and be town-dwellers
and house-dwellers and buy and sell and pay tribute as before, or else
deliver themselves to prison.

But Absalam and his people had secret word that the Governor was coming
after them, and Israel with him. So they rolled their tents, and fled to
the mountains that are midway between Tetuan and the Reef country, and
took refuge in the gullies of that rugged land, living in caves of the
rock, with only the table-land of mountain behind them, and nothing but
a rugged precipice in front. This place they selected for its safety,
intending to push forward, as occasion offered, to the sanctuaries of
Shawan, trusting rather to the humanity of the wild people, called the
Shawanis, than to the mercy of their late cruel masters. But the valley
wherein they had hidden is thick with trees, and Ben Aboo tracked them
and came up with them before they were aware. Then, sending soldiers
to the mountain at the back of the caves, with instructions that they
should come down to the precipice steadily, and kill none that they
could take alive, Ben Aboo himself drew up at the foot of it, and
Israel with him, and there called on the people to come out and deliver
themselves to his will.

When the poor people came from their hiding-places and saw that they
were surrounded, and that escape was not left to them on any side, they
thought their death was sure. But without a shout or a cry they knelt,
as with one accord, at the mouth of the precipice, with their backs
to it, men and women and children, knee to knee in a line, and joined
hands, and looked towards the soldiers, who were coming steadily down on
them. On and on the soldiers came, eye to eye with the people, and their
swords were drawn.

Israel gasped for his breath, and waited to see the people cut in pieces
at the next instant, when suddenly they began to sing where they knelt
at the edge of the precipice, “God is our refuge and our strength, a
very present help in trouble.”

In another moment the soldiers had drawn up as if swords from heaven
had fallen on them, and Israel was crying out of his dry throat, “Fear
nothing! Only deliver your bodies to the Governor, and none shall harm
you.”

Absalam rose up from his knees and called to his father and his son.
And standing between them to be seen by all, and first looking upon both
with eyes of pity, he drew from the folds of his selham a long knife
such as the Reefians wear, and taking his father by his white hair he
slew him and cast his body down the rocks. After that he turned towards
his son, and the boy was golden-haired and his face was like the
morning, and Israel’s heart bled to see him.

“Absalam!” he cried in a moving voice; “Absalam, wait, wait!”

But Absalam killed his son also, and cast him down after his father.
Then, looking around on his people with eyes of compassion, as seeming
to pity them that they must fall again into the hands of Israel and his
master, he stretched out his knife and sheathed it in his own breast,
and fell towards the precipice.

Israel covered his face and groaned in his heart, and said, “It is the
end, O Lord God, it is the end--polluted wretch that I am, with the
blood of these people upon me!”

The companions of Absalam delivered themselves to the soldiers, who
committed them to the prison at Shawan, and Ben Aboo went home in
content.

Rumour of what had come to pass was not long in reaching Tetuan, and
Israel was charged with the guilt of it. In passing through the streets
the next day on his way to his house the people hissed him openly.
“Allah had not written it!” a Moor shouted as he passed. “Take care!”
 cried an Arab, “Mohammed of Mequinez is coming!”

It chanced that night, after sundown, when Naomi, according to her wont,
led her father to the upper room, and fetched the Book of the Law from
the cupboard of the wall and laid it upon his knees, that he read the
passage whereon the page opened of itself, scarce knowing what he read
when he began to read it, for his spirit was heavy with the bad doings
of those days. And the passage whereon the book opened was this--

“_Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the Lord, and
the other lot for the scapegoat. . . . Then shall he kill the goat of
the sin-offering that is for the people, and bring his blood within the
vail. And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of
the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their
transgressions in all their sins. . . . And when he hath, made an end of
reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and
the altar, he shall bring the live goat: and Aaron shall lay both his
hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the
iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in
all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send
him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited._”

That same night Israel dreamt a dream. He had been asleep, and
had awakened in a place which he did not know. It was a great arid
wilderness. Ashen sand lay on every side; a scorching sun beat down on
it, and nowhere was there a glint of water. Israel gazed, and slowly
through the blazing sunlight he discerned white roofless walls like the
ruins of little sheepfolds. “They are tombs,” he told himself, “and this
is a Mukabar--an Arab graveyard--the most desolate place in the world
of God.” But, looking again, he saw that the roofless walls covered the
ground as far as the eye could see, and the thought came to him that
this ashen desert was the earth itself, and that all the world of
life and man was dead. Then, suddenly, in the motionless wilderness, a
solitary creature moved. It was a goat, and it toiled over the hot sand
with its head hung down and its tongue lolled out. “Water!” it seemed
to cry, though it made no voice, and its eyes traversed the plain as if
they would pierce the ground for a spring. Fever and delirium fell upon
Israel. The goat came near to him and lifted up its eyes, and he saw its
face. Then he shrieked and awoke. The face of the goat had been the face
of Naomi.

Now Israel knew that this was no more than a dream, coming of the
passage which he had read out of the book at sundown, but so vivid was
the sense of it that he could not rest in his bed until he had first
seen Naomi with his waking eyes, that he might laugh in his heart to
think how the eye of his sleep had fooled him. So he lit his lamp, and
walked through the silent house to where Naomi’s room was on the lower
floor of it.

There she lay, sleeping so peacefully, with her sunny hair flowing over
the pillow on either side of her beautiful face, and rippling in little
curls about her neck. How sweet she looked! How like a dear bud of
womanhood just opening to the eye!

Israel sat down beside her for a moment. Many a time before, at such
hours, he had sat in that same place, and then gone his ways, and she
had known nothing of it. She was like any other maiden now. Her eyes
were closed, and who should see that they were blind? Her breath came
gently, and who should say that it gave forth no speech? Her face was
quiet, and who should think that it was not the face of a homely-hearted
girl? Israel loved these moments when he was alone with Naomi while she
slept, for then only did she seem to be entirely his own, and he was not
so lonely while he was sitting there. Though men thought he was strong,
yet he was very weak. He had no one in the world to talk to save Naomi,
and she was dumb in the daytime, but in the night he could hold little
conversations with her. His love! his dove! his darling! How easily he
could trick and deceive himself and think, She will awake presently, and
speak to me! Yes; her eyes will open and see me here again, and I
shall hear her voice, for I love it! “Father!” she will say.
“Father--father--”

Only the moment of undeceiving was so cruel!

Naomi stirred, and Israel rose and left her. As he went back to his bed,
through the corridor of the patio, he heard a night-cry behind him that
made his hair to rise. It was Naomi laughing in her sleep.

Israel dreamt again that night, and he believed his second dream to be a
vision. It was only a dream, like the first; but what his dream would be
to us is nought, and what it was to him is everything. The vision as he
thought he saw it was this, and these were the words of it as he thought
he heard them--

It was the middle of the night, and he was lying in his own room, when
a dull red light as of dying flame crossed the foot of the bed, and a
voice that was as the voice of the Lord came out of it, crying “Israel!”

And Israel was sorely afraid, and answered, “Speak, Lord, Thy servant
heareth.”

Then the Lord said, “Thou has read of the goats whereon the high priest
cast lots, one lot for the sin offering and one lot for the scapegoat.”

And Israel answered trembling, “I have read.”

Then the Lord said to Israel, “Look now upon Naomi, thy child, for
she is as the sin-offering for thy sins, to make atonement for thy
transgressions, for thee and for thy household, and therefore she is
dumb to all uses of speech, and blind to all service of sight, a soul
in chains and a spirit in prison, for behold, she is as the lot that is
cast for justice and for the Lord.”

And Israel groaned in his agony and cried, “Would that the lot had
fallen upon me, O Lord, that Thou mightest be justified when thou
speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest, for I alone am guilty before
Thee.”

Then said the Lord to Israel, “On thee, also, hath the lot fallen, even
the lot of the scapegoat of the enemies of the people of God.”

And Israel quaked with fear, and the Lord called to him again, and said,
“Israel, even as the scapegoat carries the iniquities of the people, so
cost thou carry the iniquities of thy master, Ben Aboo, and of his wife,
Katrina; and even as the goat bears the sins of the people into the
wilderness, so, in the resurrection, shalt thou bear the sins of this
man and of this woman into a land that no man knoweth.”

Then Israel wrestled no longer with the Lord, but sweated as it were
drops of blood, and cried, “What shall I do, O Lord?”

And the Lord said, “Lie unto the morning, and then arise, get thee to
the country by Mequinez and to the man there whereof thou hast heard
tidings, and he shall show thee what thou shalt do.”

Then Israel wept with gladness, and cried, saying, “Shall my soul live?
Shall the lot be lifted from off me, and from off Naomi, my daughter?”

But the Lord left him, the red light died out from across the bed, and
all around was darkness.

Now to the last day and hour of his life Israel would have taken oath on
the Scriptures that he saw this vision, and he heard this voice, not in
his sleep and as in a dream, but awake, and having plain sight of all
common things about him--his room and his bed; and the canopy that
covered it. And on rising in the morning, at daydawn, so actual was the
sense of what he had seen and heard, and so powerful the impression of
it, that he straightway set himself to carry out the injunction it had
made, without question of its reality or doubt of its authority.

Therefore, committing his household to the care of Ali, who was now
grown to be a stalwart black lad his constant right hand and helpmate,
Israel first sent to the Governor, saying he should be ten days absent
from Tetuan, and then to the Kasbah for a soldier and guide, and to the
market-place for mules.

Before the sun was high everything was in readiness, and the caravan was
waiting at the door. Then Israel remembered Naomi. Where was the girl,
that he had not seen her that morning? They answered him that she had
not yet left her room, and he sent the black woman Fatimah to fetch
her. And when she came and he had kissed her, bidding her farewell in
silence, his heart misgave him concerning her, and, after raising his
foot to the stirrup, he returned to where she stood in the patio with
the two bondwomen beside her.

“Is she well?” he asked.

“Oh yes, well--very well,” said Fatimah, and Habeebah echoed her.
Nevertheless, Israel remembered that he had not heard the only language
of her lips, her laugh, and, looking at her again, he saw that her face,
which had used to be cheerful, was now sad. At that he almost repented
of his purpose, and but for shame in his own eyes he might have gone
no farther, for it smote him with terror that, though she were sick,
nothing could she say to stay him, and even if she were dying she must
let him go his ways without warning.

He kissed her again, and she clung to him, so that at last, with many
words of tender protest which she did not hear, he had to break away
from the beautiful arms that held him.

Ali was waiting by the mules in the streets, and the soldier and guide
and muleteers and tentmen were already mounted, amid a chattering throng
of idle people looking on.

“Ali, my lad,” said Israel, “if anything should befall Naomi while I am
away, will you watch over her and guard her with all your strength?”

“With all my life,” said Ali stoutly. He was Naomi’s playfellow no
longer, but her devoted slave.

Then Israel set off on his journey.



CHAPTER IX

ISRAEL’S JOURNEY


MOHAMMED of Mequinez, the man whom Israel went out to seek, had been a
Kadi and the son of a Kadi. While he was still a child his father died,
and he was brought up by two uncles, his father’s brothers, both men of
yet higher place, the one being Naib es-sultan, or Foreign Minister, at
Tangier, and the other Grand Vizier to the Sultan at Morocco. Thus in a
land where there is one noble only, the Sultan himself, where ascent and
descent are as free as in a republic, though the ways of both are
mired with crime and corruption, Mohammed was come as from the highest
nobility. Nevertheless, he renounced his rank and the hope of wealth
that went along with it at the call of duty and the cry of misery.

He parted from his uncles, abandoned his judgeship, and went out into
the plains. The poor and outcast and down-trodden among the people, the
shamed, the disgraced, and the neglected left the towns and followed
him. He established a sect. They were to be despisers of riches and
lovers of poverty. No man among them was to have more than another. They
were never to buy or sell among themselves, but every one was to give
what he had to him that wanted it. They were to avoid swearing, yet
whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath. They were to be
ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to
resist him. Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh
to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and
shed no tear. And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to
esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible,
but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released
from the bondage of the flesh. Not dissenters from the Koran, but
stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of
Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.

And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the
cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all. From the streets,
from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service
of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds
and trooped after him. They needed no badge but the badge of poverty,
and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery. Most of them brought
nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs
save the stripes of their tormentors. A few had flocks and herds, which
they drove before them. A few had tents, which they shared with their
fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for
their food and the hyena for their safety. Thus, possessing little and
desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering
themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of
battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded,
passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about
Mequinez. And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been
so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as
Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan: “God will feed
us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He
clothes the fields.”

Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek. But Israel knew his
people too well to make known his errand. His besetting difficulties
were enough already. The year was young, but the days were hot; a
palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom
had the dusty and tired look of autumn. It was also the month of the
fast of Ramadhan, and Israel’s men were Muslims. So, to save himself the
double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his
famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the
night. In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some
obstacles, but his time was long.

And, just as he had hidden his errand from the men of his own caravan,
so he concealed it from the people of the country that he passed
through, and many and various, and sometimes ludicrous and sometimes
very pitiful were the conjectures they made concerning it. While he was
passing through his own province of Tetuan, nothing did the poor people
think but that he had come to make a new assessment of their lands and
holdings, their cattle and belongings, that he might tax them afresh and
more fully. So, to buy his mercy in advance, many of them came out of
their houses as he drew near, and knelt on the ground before his horse,
and kissed the skirts of his kaftan, and his knees, and even his foot
in his stirrup, and called him _Sidi_ (master, my lord), a title never
before given to a Jew, and offered him presents out of their meagre
substance.

“A gift for my lord,” they would say, “of the little that God has given
us, praise His merciful name for ever!”

Then they would push forward a sheep or a goat, or a string of hens tied
by the legs so as to hang across his saddle-bow, or, perhaps, at the two
trembling hands of an old woman living alone on a hungry scratch of land
in a desolate place, a bowl of buttermilk.

Israel was touched by the people’s terror, but he betrayed no feeling.

“Keep them,” he would answer; “keep them until I come again,” intending
to tell them, when that time came, to keep their poor gifts altogether.

And when he had passed out of the province of Tetuan into the bashalic
of El Kasar, the bareheaded country-people of the valley of the Koos
hastened before him to the Kaid of that grey town of bricks and storks
and palm-trees and evil odours, and the Kaid, with another notion of his
errand, came to the tumble-down bridge to meet him on his approach in
the early morning.

“Peace be with you!” said the Kaid. “So my lord is going again to the
Shereef at Wazzan; may the mercy of the Merciful protect him!”

Israel neither answered yea nor nay, but threaded the maze of
crooked lanes to the lodging which had been provided for him near
the market-place, and the same night he left the town (laden with the
presents of the Kaid) through a line of famished and half-naked beggars
who looked on with feverish eyes.

Next day, at dawn, he came to the heights of Wazzan (a holy city of
Morocco), by the olives and junipers and evergreen oaks that grow at the
foot of the lofty, double-peaked Boo-Hallal, and there the young grand
Shereef himself, at the gate of his odorous orange-gardens, stood
waiting to give audience with yet another conjecture as to the intention
of his journey.

“Welcome! welcome!” said the Shereef; “all you see is yours until Allah
shall decree that you leave me too soon on your happy mission to our
lord the Sultan at Fez--may God prolong his life and bless him!”

“God make you happy!” said Israel, but he offered no answer to the
question that was implied.

“It is twenty and odd years, my lord,” the Shereef continued, “since my
father sent for you out of Tetuan, and many are the ups and downs that
time has wrought since then, under Allah’s will; but none in the past
have been so grateful as the elevation of Israel ben Oliel, and none in
the future can be so joyful as the favours which the Sultan (God keep
our lord Abd er-Rahman!) has still in store for him.”

“God will show,” said Israel.

No Jew had ever yet ridden in this Moroccan Mecca; but the Shereef
alighted from his horse and offered it to Israel, and took Israel’s
horse instead and together they rode through the market-place, and past
the old Mosque that is a ruin inhabited by hawks and the other mosque
of the Aissawa, and the three squalid fondaks wherein the Jews live
like cattle. A swarm of Arabs followed at their heels in tattered greasy
rags, a group of Jews went by them barefoot and a knot of bedraggled
renegades leaning against the walls of the prison doffed the caps from
their dishevelled heads and bowed.

That day, while the poor people of the town fasted according to the
ordinance of the Ramadhan, Israel’s little company of Muslimeen--guests
in the house of the descendants of the Prophet--were, by special
Shereefian dispensation, permitted as travellers to eat and drink at
their pleasure. And before sunset, but at the verge of it, Israel and
his men started on their journey afresh, going out of the town, with
the Shereef’s black bodyguard riding before them for guide and badge of
honour, through the dense and noisome market-place, where (like a clock
that is warning to strike) a multitude of hungry and thirsty people with
fierce and dirty faces, under a heavy wave of palpitating heat, and amid
clouds of hot dust, were waiting for the sound of the cannon that should
proclaim the end of that day’s fast. Water-carriers at the fountains
stood ready to fill their empty goats’ skins, women and children sat on
the ground with dishes of greasy soup on their knees and balls of grain
rolled in their fingers, men lay about holding pipes charged with keef,
and flint and tinder to light them, and the mooddin himself in the
minaret stood looking abroad (unless he were blind) to where the red sun
was lazily sinking under the plain.

Israel’s soul sickened within him, for well he knew that, lavish as were
the honours that were shown him, they were offered by the rich out of
their selfishness and by the poor out of their fear. While they thought
the Sultan had sent for him, they kissed his foot who desired no homage,
and loaded him with presents who needed no gifts. But one word out of
his mouth, only one little word, one other name, and what then of this
lip-service, and what of this mock-honour!

Two days later Israel and his company reached before dawn the snake-like
ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over
the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town,
through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious
barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they
came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the
Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept
it were snoring in their rags under the arch of the wall within.

“Selam! M’barak! Abd el Kader! Abd el Kareem!” shouted the Shereef’s
black guard to the sleepy gate-keepers. They had come thus far in
Israel’s honour, and would not return to Wazzan until they had seen him
housed within.

From the other side of the gate, through the mist and the gloom, came
yawns and broken snores and then snarls and curses. “Burn your father!
Pretty hubbub in the middle of the night!”

“Selam!” shouted one of the black guard. “You dog of dogs! Your father
was bewitched by a hyena! I’ll teach you to curse your betters. Quick!
get up,--or I’ll shave your beard. Open! or I’ll ride the donkey on your
head! There!--and there!--and there again!” and at every word the butt
of his long gun rang on the old oaken gate.

“Hamed el Wazzani!” muttered several voices within.

“Yes,” shouted the Shereef’s man. “And my Lord Israel of Tetuan on his
way to the Sultan, God grant him victory. Do you hear, you dogs? Sidi
Israel el Tetawani sitting here in the dark, while you are sleeping and
snoring in your dirt.”

There was a whispered conference on the inside, then a rattle of keys,
and then the gate groaned back on its hinges. At the next moment two
of the four gatemen were on their knees at the feet of Israel’s horse,
asking forgiveness by grace of Allah and his Prophet. In the meantime,
the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had
ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and
country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham
and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.

“I heard you were coming,” he panted--“sent for by the Sultan--Allah
preserve him!--but had I known you were to be here so soon--I--that
is--”

“Peace be with you!” interrupted Israel.

“God grant you peace. The Sultan--praise the merciful Allah!” the Kaid
continued, bowing low over Israel’s stirrup--“he reached Fez from
Marrakesh last sunset; you will be in time for him.”

“God will show,” said Israel, and he pushed forward.

“Ah, true--yes--certainly--my lord is tired,” puffed the Kaid, bowing
again most profoundly. “Well, your lodging is ready--the best in
Mequinez--and your mona is cooking--all the dainties of Barbary--and
when our merciful Abd er-Rahman has made you his Grand Vizier--”

Thus the man chattered like a jay, bowing low at nigh every word, until
they came to the house wherein Israel and his people were to rest until
sunset; and always the burden of his words was the same--the Sultan, the
Sultan, the Sultan, and Abd er-Rahman, Abd er-Rahman!

Israel could bear no more. “Basha,” he said “it is a mistake; the Sultan
has not sent for me, and neither am I going to see him.”

“Not going to him?” the Kaid echoed vacantly.

“No, but to another,” said Israel; “and you of all men can best tell me
where that other is to be found. A great man, newly risen--yet a poor
man--the young Mahdi Mohammed of Mequinez.”

Then there was a long silence.

Israel did not rest in Mequinez until sunset of that day. Soon after
sunrise he went out at the gate at which he had so lately entered, and
no man showed him honour. The black guard of the Shereef of Wazzan had
gone off before him, chuckling and grinning in their disgust, and behind
him his own little company of soldiers, guides, muleteers, and tentmen,
who, like himself, had neither slept nor eaten, were dragging along in
dudgeon. The Kaid had turned them out of the town.

Later in the day, while Israel and his people lay sheltering within
their tents on the plain of Sais by the river Nagar, near the
tent-village called a Douar, and the palm-tree by the bridge, there
passed them in the fierce sunshine two men in the peaked shasheeah of
the soldier, riding at a furious gallop from the direction of Fez, and
shouting to all they came upon to fly from the path they had to pass
over. They were messengers of the Sultan, carrying letters to the Kaid
of Mequinez, commanding him to present himself at the palace without
delay, that he might give good account of his stewardship, or else
deliver up his substance and be cast into prison for the defalcations
with which rumour had charged him.

Such was the errand of the soldiers, according to the country-people,
who toiled along after them on their way home from the markets at
Fez; and great was the glee of Israel’s men on hearing it, for they
remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last
in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly
touched by a sense of Fate’s coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of
its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his
door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and
built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken
from him and the other failed him, where then was the hope of that man’s
salvation, whether in this world or the next? The dungeon, the chain,
the lash, the wooden jellab--what else was left to him? Only the wail
of the poor whom he has made poorer, the curse of the orphan whom he
has made fatherless, and the execration of the down-trodden whom he has
oppressed. These followed him into his prison, and mingled their cries
with the clank of his irons, for they were voices which had never yet
deserted the man that made them, but clamoured loud at the last when his
end had come, above the death-rattle in his throat. One dim hour waited
for all men always, whether in the prison or in the palace--one lonely
hour wherein none could bear him company--and what was wealth and
treasure to man’s soul beyond it? Was it power on earth? Was it
glory? Was it riches? Oh! glory of the earth--what could it be but a
will-o’-the-wisp pursued in the darkness of the night! Oh! riches of
gold and silver--what had they ever been but marsh-fire gathered in the
dusk! The empire of the world was evil, and evil was the service of the
prince of it!

Then Israel thought of Naomi, his sweet treasure--so far away. Though
all else fell from him like dry sand from graspless fingers, yet if by
God’s good mercy the lot of the sin-offering could be lifted away from
his child, he would be content and happy! Naomi! His love! His darling!
His sweet flower afflicted for his transgression. Oh! let him lose
anything, everything, all that the world and all that the devil had
given him; but let the curse be lifted from his helpless child! For what
was gold without gladness, and what was plenty without peace?

Israel lit upon the Mahdi at last in the country of the verbena and the
musk that lies outside the walls of Fez. The prophet was a young man of
unusual stature, but no great strength of body, with a head that drooped
like a flower and with the wild eyes of an enthusiast. His people were
a vast concourse that covered the plain a furlong square, and included
multitudes of women and children. Israel had come upon them at an evil
moment. The people were murmuring against their leader. Six months ago
they had abandoned their houses and followed him They had passed from
Mequinez to Rabat, from Rabat to Mazagan, from Mazagan to Mogador, from
Mogador to Marrakesh, and finally from Marrakesh through the treacherous
Beni Magild to Fez. At every step their numbers had increased but
their substance had diminished, for only the destitute had joined them.
Nevertheless, while they had their flocks and herds they had borne their
privations patiently--the weary journeys, the exposure, the long rains
of the spring and the scorching heat of summer. But the soldiers of the
Kaids whose provinces they had passed through had stripped them of both
in the name of tribute. The last raid on their poverty had been made
that very day by the Kaid of Fez, and now they were without goats or
sheep or oxen, or even the guns with which they had killed the wild
bear, and their children were crying to them for bread.

So the people’s faces grew black, and they looked into each other’s eyes
in their impotent rage. Why had they been brought out of the cities to
starve? Better to stay there and suffer than come out and perish! What
of the vain promises that had been made to them that God would feed them
as He fed the birds! God was witness to all their calamities; He was
seeing them robbed day by day, He was seeing them famish hour by hour,
He was seeing them die. They had been fooled! A vain man had thought to
plough his way to power. Through their bodies he was now ploughing it.
“The hunger is on us!” “Our children are perishing!” “Find us food!”
 “Food!” “Food!”

With such shouts, mingled with deep oaths, the hungry multitude in their
madness had encompassed Mohammed of Mequinez as Israel and his company
came up with them. And Israel heard their cries, and also the voice of
their leader when he answered them.

First the young prophet rose up among his people, with flashing eyes and
quivering nostrils. “Do you think I am Moses,” he cried, “that I should
smite the rock and work you a miracle? If you are starving, am I full?
If you are naked, am I clothed?”

But in another instant the fire of anger was gone from his face, and he
was saying in a very moving voice, “My good people, who have followed
me through all these miseries, I know that your burdens are heavier than
you can bear, and that your lives are scarce to be endured, and that
death itself would be a relief. Nevertheless, who shall say but that
Allah sees a way to avert these trials of His poor servants, and that,
unknown to us all, He is even at this moment bringing His mercy to pass!
Patience, I beg of you; patience, my poor people--patience and trust!”

At that the murmurs of discontent were hushed. Then Israel remembered
the presents with which the Kaid of El Kasar and the Shereef of Wazzan
had burdened him. They were jewels and ornaments such as are sometimes
worn unlawfully by vain men in that country--silver signet rings and
earrings, chains for the neck, and Solomon’s seal to hang on the breast
as safeguard against the evil eye--as well as much gold filagree of the
kind that men give to their women. Israel had packed them in a box
and laid them in the leaf pannier of a mule, and then given no further
thought to them; but, calling now to the muleteer who had charge of
them, he said, “Take them quickly to the good man yonder, and say, ‘A
present to the man of God and to his people in their trouble.’”

And when the muleteer had done this, and laid the box of gold and silver
open at the feet of the young Mahdi, saying what Israel had bidden him,
it was the same to the young man and his followers as if the sky had
opened and rained manna on their heads.

“It is an answer to your prayer,” he cried; “an angel from heaven has
sent it.”

Then his people, as soon as they realised what good thing had happened
to them, took up his shout of joy, and shouted out of their own parched
throats--

“Prophet of Allah, we will follow you to the world’s end!”

And then down on their knees they fell around him, the vast concourse of
men and women, all grinning like apes in their hunger and glee together,
and sobbing and laughing in a breath, like children, and sent up a great
broken cry of thanks to God that He had sent them succour, that they
might not die. At last, when they had risen to their feet again, every
man looked into the eyes of his fellow and said, as if ashamed, “I could
have borne it myself, but when the children called to me for bread. I
was a fool.”



CHAPTER X

THE WATCHWORD OF THE MAHDI


Early the next day Israel set his face homeward, with this old word of
the new prophet for his guide and motto: “Exact no more than is just; do
violence to no man; accuse none falsely; part with your riches and give
to the poor.” That was all the answer he got out of his journey, and if
any man had come to him in Tetuan with no newer story, it must have been
an idle and a foolish errand; but after El Kasar, after Wazzan, after
Mequinez, and now after Fez, it seemed to be the sum of all wisdom.
“I’ll do it,” he said; “at all risks and all costs, I’ll do it.”

And, as a prelude to that change in his way of life which he meant
to bring to pass he sent his men and mules ahead of him, emptied his
pockets of all that he should not need on his journey, and prepared to
return to his own country on foot and alone. The men had first gaped in
amazement, and then laughed in derision; and finally they had gone their
ways by themselves, telling all who encountered them that the Sultan
at Fez had stripped their master of everything, and that he was coming
behind them penniless.

But, knowing nothing of this graceless service. Israel began his
homeward journey with a happy heart. He had less than thirty dollars in
his waistband of the more than three hundred with which he had set out
from Tetuan; he was a hundred and fifty miles from that town, or five
long days’ travel; the sun was still hot, and he must walk in the
daytime. Surely the Lord would see it that never before had any man done
so much to wipe out God’s displeasure as he was now doing and yet would
do. He had said nothing of Naomi to the Mahdi even when he told him of
his vision; but all his hopes had centred in the child. The lot of the
sin-offering must be gone from her now, and in the resurrection he would
meet her without shame. If he had brought fruits meet to repentance,
then must her debt also be wiped away. Surely never before had any child
been so smitten of God, and never had any father of an afflicted child
bought God’s mercy at so dear a price!

Such were the thoughts that Israel cherished secretly, though he dared
not to utter them, lest he should seem to be bribing God out of his love
of the child. And thus if his heart was glad as he turned towards home,
it was proud also, and if it was grateful it was also vain; but vanity
and pride were both smitten out of it in an hour, before he went through
the gates of Fez (wherein he had slept the night preceding), by three
sights which, though stern and pitiful, were of no uncommon occurrence
in that town and province.

First, it chanced that as he was passing from the south-east of the new
town of Fez to the gate that is at the north-west corner, going by the
high walls of the Sultan’s hareem, where there is room for a thousand
women, and near to the Karueein mosque that is the greatest in Morocco
and rests on eight hundred pillars, he came upon two slaveholders
selling twelve or fourteen slaves. The slaves were all girls, and all
black, and of varying ages, ranging from ten years to about thirty. They
had lately arrived in caravans from the Soudan, by way of Tafilet and
the Wargha, and some of them looked worn from the desert passage. Others
were fresh and cheerful, and such as had claims to negro beauty were
adorned, after their doubtful fashion, or the fancy of their masters,
with love-charms of silver worn about their necks, with their fingers
pricked out with hennah, and their eyelids darkened with kohl. Thus they
were drawn up in a line for public auction; but before the sale of them
could begin among the buyers that had gathered about them in the street,
the overseers of the Sultan’s hareem had to come and make a selection
for their master. This the eunuchs presently did, and when two of them
nicknamed Areefahs--gaunt and hairless men, with the faces of evil old
women and the hoarse voices of ravens--had picked out three fat black
maidens, the business of the auction began by the sale of a negro girl
of seventeen who was brought out from the rest and passed around.

“Now, brothers,” said the slave-master, “look see; sound of wind and
limb--how much?”

“Eighty dollars,” said a voice from the crowd.

“Eighty? Well, eighty to start with. Look at her--rosy lips, fit for the
kisses of a king, eh? How much?”

“A hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars offered; only a hundred. It’s giving the girl away.
Look at her teeth, brothers, white and sound.”

The slave-master thrust his thumb into the girl’s mouth and walked her
round the crowd again.

“Breath like new-mown hay, brothers. Now’s the chance for true
believers. How much?”

“A hundred and ten.”

“A hundred and ten--thanks, Sidi! A hundred and ten for this jewel of a
girl. Dirt cheap yet, brothers. Try her muscles. Look at her flesh. Not
a flaw anywhere. Pass her round, test her, try her, talk to her--she
speaks good Arabic. Isn’t she fit for a Sultan? She’s the best thing
I’ll offer to-day, and by the Prophet, if you are not quick I’ll keep
her for myself. Now, for the third and last time--seventeen years of
age, sound, strong, plump, sweet, and intact--how much?”

Israel’s blood tingled to see how the bidders handled the girl, and to
hear what shameless questions they asked of her, and with a long sigh he
was turning away from the crowd, when another man came up to it. The man
was black and old and hard-featured, and visibly poor in his torn white
selham. But when he had looked over the heads of those in front of him,
he made a great shout of anguish, and, parting the people, pushed his
way to the girl’s side, and opened his arms to her, and she fell into
them with a cry of joy and pain together.

It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before,
had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben
Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and
from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him. This story he
told, in broken Arabic; to those that stood around, and, hard as were
the faces of the bidders, and brutal as was their trade; there was not
an eye among them all but was melted at his story.

Seeing this, Israel cried from the back of the crowd, “I will give
twenty dollars to buy him the girl’s liberty,” and straightway another
and another offered like sums for the same purpose until the amount of
the last bid had been reached, and the slave-master took it, and the
girl was free.

Then the poor negro, still holding his daughter by the hand, came to
Israel, with the tears dripping down his black cheeks, and said in his
broken way: “The blessing of Allah upon you, white brother, and if you
have a child of your own may you never lose her, but may Allah favour
her and let you keep her with you always!”

That blessing of the old black man was more than Israel could bear,
and, facing about before hearing the last of it, he turned down the
dark arcade that descends into the old town as into a vault, and having
crossed the markets, he came upon the second of the three sights that
were to smite out of his heart his pride towards God. A man in a blue
tunic girded with a red sash, and with a red cotton handkerchief tied
about his head, was driving a donkey laden with trunks of light trees
cut into short lengths to lie over its panniers. He was clearly a
Spanish woodseller and he had the weary, averted, and downcast look of
a race that is despised and kept under. His donkey was a bony creature,
with raw places on its flank and shoulders where its hide had been worn
by the friction of its burdens. He drove it slowly; crying “Arrah!” to
it in the tongue of its own country, and not beating it cruelly. At
the bottom of the arcade there was an open place where a foul ditch was
crossed by a rickety bridge. Coming to this the man hesitated a moment,
as if doubtful whether to drive his donkey over it or to make the beast
trudge through the water. Concluding to cross the bridge, he cried
“Arrah!” again, and drove the donkey forward with one blow of his stick.
But when the donkey was in the middle of it, the rotten thing gave way,
and the beast and its burden fell into the ditch. The donkey’s legs were
broken, and when a throng of Arabs, who gathered at the Spaniard’s cry,
had cut away its panniers and dragged it out of the water on to the
paving-stones of the street, the film covered its eyes, and in a moment
it was dead.

At that the man knelt down beside it, and patted it on its neck, and
called on it by its name, as if unwilling to believe that it was gone.
And while the Arabs laughed at him for doing so--for none seemed to pity
him--a slatternly girl of sixteen or seventeen came scudding down the
arcade, and pushed her way through the crowd until she stood where the
dead ass lay with the man kneeling beside it. Then she fell on the
man with bitter reproaches. “Allah blot out your name, you thief!” she
cried. “You’ve killed the creature, and may you starve and die yourself,
you dog of a Nazarene!”

This was more than Israel could listen to, and he commanded the girl
to hold her peace. “Silence, you young wanton!” he cried, in a voice
of indignation. “Who are you, that you dare trample on the man in his
trouble?”

It turned out that the girl was the man’s daughter, and he was a
renegade from Ceuta. And when she had gone off, cursing Israel and his
father and his grandfather, the poor fellow lifted his eyes to Israel’s
face, and said, “You are very kind, my father. God bless you! I may not
be a good man, sir, and I’ve not lived a right life, but it’s hard when
your own children are taught to despise you. Better to lose them in
their cradles, before they can speak to you to curse you.”

Israel’s hair seemed to rise from his scalp at that word, and he turned
about and hurried away. Oh no, no, no! He was not, of all men, the most
sorely tried. Worse to be a slave, torn from the arms he loves! Worse to
be a father whose children join with his enemies to curse him!

He had been wrong. What was wealth, that it was so noble a sacrifice
to part with it? Money was to give and to take, to buy and to sell,
and that was all. But love was for no market, and he who lost it lost
everything. And love was his, and would be his always, for he loved
Naomi, and she clung to him as the hyssop clings to the wall. Let him
walk humbly before God, for God was great.

Now these sights, though they reduced Israel’s pride, increased his
cheerfulness, and he was going out at the gate with a humbler yet
lighter spirit, when he came upon a saint’s house under the shadow of
the town walls. It was a small whitewashed enclosure, surmounted by a
white flag; and, as Israel passed it, the figure of a man came out to
the entrance. He was a poor, miserable creature--ragged, dirty, and with
dishevelled hair--and, seeing Israel’s eyes upon him, he began to talk
in some wild way and in some unknown tongue that was only a fierce
jabber of sounds that had no words in them, and of words that had no
meaning. The poor soul was mad, and because he was distraught he was
counted a holy man among his people, and put to live in this place,
which was the tomb of a dead saint--though not more dead to the ways of
life was he who lay under the floor than he who lived above it. The
man continued his wild jabber as long as Israel’s eyes were on him, and
Israel dropped two coins into his hand and passed on.

Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God’s creatures.
And yet, and yet, and yet, her bodily infirmities were but the type and
sign of how her soul was smitten.

On the hill outside the town the young Mahdi, with a great company of
his people, was waiting for him to bid him godspeed on his journey.
And then, while they walked some paces together before parting, and the
prophet talked of the poor followers of Absalam lying in the prison at
Shawan (for he had heard of them from Israel), Israel himself mentioned
Naomi.

“My father,” he said, “there is something that I have not told you.”

“Tell it now, my son,” said the Mahdi.

“I have a little daughter at home, and she is very sweet and beautiful.
You would never think how like sunshine she is to me in my lonely house,
for her mother is gone, and but for her I should be alone, and so she is
very near and dear to me. But she is in the land of silence and in the
land of night. Nothing can she see, and nothing hear, and never has
her voice opened the curtains of the air, for she is blind and dumb and
deaf.”

“Merciful Allah!” cried the Mahdi.

“Ah! is her state so terrible? I thought you would think it so. Yes, for
all she is so beautiful, she is only as a creature of the fields that
knows not God.”

“Allah preserve her!” cried the Mahdi.

“And she is smitten for my sin, for the Lord revealed it to me in the
vision, and my soul trembles for her soul. But if God has washed me with
water should not she also be clean?”

“God knows,” said the Mahdi. “He gives no rewards for repentance.”

“But listen!” said Israel. “In a vision of death her mother saw her, and
she was afflicted no more. No, for she could see, and hear, and speak.
Man of God, will it come to pass?”

“God is good,” said the Mahdi. “He needs that no man should teach Him
pity.”

“But I love her,” cried Israel, “and I vowed to her mother to guard her.
She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has
no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will
have mercy?”

The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, “The Lord sees all. Go your
way in trust. Farewell!”

“Farewell!”



CHAPTER XI

ISRAEL’S HOME-COMING


ISRAEL’S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his
going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on
setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he
had started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their
story. So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or
jeered at him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour
now stepped aside that he might pass.

Two days after leaving Fez he came again to Wazzan. Women were going
home from market by the side of their camels, and charcoal-burners were
riding back to the country on the empty burdas of their mules. It
was nigh upon sunset when Israel entered the town, and so exactly
was everything the same that he could almost have tricked himself and
believed that scarce two minutes had passed since he had left it. There
at the fountains were the water-carriers waiting with their water-skins,
and there in the market-place sat the women and children with their
dishes of soup; there were the men by the booths with their pipes ready
charged with keef, and there was the mooddin in the minaret, looking
out over the plain. Everything was the same save one thing, and that
concerned Israel himself. No Grand Shereef stood waiting to exchange
horses with him, and no black guard led him through the town. Footsore
and dirty, covered with dust, and tired, he walked through the
streets alone. And when presently the voice rang out overhead, and the
breathless town broke instantly into bubbles of sounds--the tinkling
of the bells of the water-carriers, the shouts of the children, and the
calls of the men--only one man seemed to see him and know him. This was
an Arab, wearing scarcely enough rags to cover his nakedness, who was
bathing his hot cheeks in water which a water-carrier was pouring into
his hands, and he lifted his glistening face as Israel passed, and
called him “Dog!” and “Jew!” and commanded him to uncover his feet.

Israel slept that night in one of the three squalid fondaks of Wazzan
inhabited by the Jews. His room was a sort of narrow box, in a square
court of many such boxes, with a handful of straw shaken over the earth
floor for a bed. On the doorpost the figure of a hand was painted in
red, and over the lintel there was a rude drawing of a scorpion, with an
imprecation written under it that purported to be from the mouth of
the Prophet Joshua, son of Nun. If the charm kept evil spirits from the
place of Israel’s rest, it did not banish good ones. Israel slept in
that poor bed as he had never slept under the purple canopy of his own
chamber, and all night long one angel form seemed to hover over him.
It was Naomi. He could see her clearly. They were together in a little
cottage somewhere. The house was a mean one, but jasmine and marjoram
and pinks and roses grew outside of it, and love grew inside. And Naomi!
How bright were her eyes, for they could see! Yes, and her ears could
hear, and her tongue could speak!

Two days after Israel left Wazzan he was back in the bashalic of Tetuan.
Each night he had dreamt the same dream, and though he knew each morning
when he awoke with a sigh that his dream was only a reflection of his
dead wife’s vision, yet he could not help but think of it the long day
through. He tried to remember if he had ever seen the cottage with his
waking eyes, and where he had seen it, and to recall the voice of Naomi
as he had heard it in his dream, that he might know if it was the same
as he used to think he heard when he sat by her in his stolen watches of
the night while she lay asleep. Sometimes when he reflected he thought
he must be growing childish, so foolish was his joy in looking forward
to the night--for he had almost grown in love with it--that he might
dream his dream again.

But it was a dear, delicious folly, for it helped him to bear the
troubles of his journey, and they were neither light nor few. After
passing through El Kasar he had been robbed and stripped both of his
small remaining moneys and the better part of his clothes by a gang of
ruffians who had followed him out of the town. Then a good woman--the
old wife, turned into the servant of a Moor who had married a young
one--had taken pity on his condition and given him a disused Moorish
jellab. His misfortune had not been without its advantage. Being forced
to travel the rest of his way home in the disguise of a Moor, he had
heard himself discussed by his own people when they knew nothing of his
presence. Every evil that had befallen them had been attributed to him.
Ben Aboo, their Basha, was a good, humane man, who was often driven to
do that which his soul abhorred. It was Israel ben Oliel who was their
cruel taxmaster.

When Israel was within a day’s journey of Tetuan a terrible scourge fell
upon the country. A plague of locusts came up like a dense cloud from
the direction of the desert, and ate up every leaf and blade of grass
that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it
had passed was as black and barren as a lava stream. The farmers
were impoverished, and the poorer people made beggars. Even this last
disaster they charged in their despair to Israel, for Allah was now
cursing them for Israel’s sake. They were the same people that had
thrust their presents upon him when he was setting out.

At the lonesome hut of the old woman who had offered him a bowl of
buttermilk Israel rested and asked for a drink of water. She gave him
a dish of zummetta--barley roasted like coffee--and inquired if he
was going on to Tetuan. He told her yes, and she asked if his home was
there. And when he answered that it was, she looked at him again, and
said in a moving way, “Then Allah help you, brother.”

“Why me more than another, sister?” said Israel.

“Because it is plain to see that you are a poor man,” said the old
woman. “And that is the sort he is hardest upon.”

Israel faltered and said, “He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--”

“Who else but Israel the Jew?” said she, and then added, as by a sudden
afterthought, “But they say he is gone at last, and the Sultan has
stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else soon to set right this
poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men he might have been--so
wise and powerful!”

Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,
he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him. “They
tell me,” he said, “that Allah has cursed him with a daughter that has
devils.”

“Blind and dumb, poor soul,” said the old woman; “but Allah has pity for
the afflicted--he is taking her away.”

Israel rose. “Away?”

“She is ill since her father went to Fez.”

“Ill?”

“Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying.”

Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,
and fled out of the hut. Oh, fool of fools, why had he been dallying
with dreams--billing and cooing with his own fancies--fondling and
nuzzling and coddling them? Let all dreams henceforth be dead and damned
for ever; for only devils out of hell had made them that poor men’s
souls might be staked and lost! Oh, why had he not remembered the pale
face of Naomi when he left her, and the silence of her tongue that had
used to laugh? Fool, fool! Why had he ever left her at all?

With such thoughts Israel hurried along, sometimes running at his
utmost velocity, and then stopping dead short; sometimes shouting his
imprecations at the pitch of his voice and beating his fist against the
sharp aloes until it bled, and then whispering to himself in awe.

Would God not hear his prayer? God knew the child was very near and dear
to him, and also that he was a lonely man. “Have pity on a lonely man,
O God!” he whispered. “Let me keep my child; take all else that I have,
everything, no matter what! Only let me keep her--yes, just as she is,
let me have her still! Time was when I asked more of Thee, but now I am
humble, and ask that alone.”

On his knees in a lonesome place, with the fierce sun beating down on
his uncovered head, amid the blackened leaves left by the locust, he
prayed this prayer, and then rose to his feet and ran.

When he got to Tetuan the white city was glistening under the setting
sun. Then he thought of his Moorish jellab, and looked at himself, and
saw that he was returning home like a beggar; and he remembered with
what splendour he had started out. Should he wait for the darkness, and
creep into his house under the cover of it? If the thought had occurred
an hour before he must have scouted it. Better to brave the looks of
every face in Tetuan than be kept back one minute from Naomi. But now
that he was so near he was afraid to go in; and now that he was so soon
to learn the truth he dreaded to hear it. So he walked to and fro on the
heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself,
eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was
waiting for the night.

The night came at length, and, under a deep-blue sky fast whitening with
thick stars, Israel passed unknown through the Moorish gate, which was
still open, and down the narrow lane to the market square. At the gate
of the Mellah, which was closed, he knocked, and demanded entrance in
the name of the Kaid. The Moorish guards who kept it fell back at sight
of him with looks of consternation.

“Israel!” cried one, and dropped his lantern.

Israel whispered, “Keep your tongue between your teeth!” and hurried on.

At the door of his own house, which was also closed, he knocked again,
but more fearfully. The black woman Habeebah opened it cautiously, and,
seeing his jellab, she clashed it back in his face.

“Habeebah!” he cried, and he knocked once more.

Then Ali came to the door. “What Moorish man are you?” cried Ali,
pushing him back as he pressed forward.

“Ali! Hush! It is I--Israel.”

Then Ali knew him and cried, “God save us! What has happened?”

“What has happened here?” said Israel. “Naomi,” he faltered, “what of
her?”

“Then you have heard?” said Ali. “Thank God, she is now well.”

Israel laughed--his laugh was like a scream.

“More than that--a strange thing has befallen her since you went away,”
 said Ali.

“What?”

“She can hear!”

“It’s a lie!” cried Israel, and he raised his hand and struck Ali to
the floor. But at the next minute he was lifting him up and sobbing and
saying, “Forgive me, my brave boy. I was mad, my son; I did not know
what I was doing. But do not torture me. If what you tell me is true,
there is no man so happy under heaven; but if it is false, there is no
fiend in hell need envy me.”

And Ali answered through his tears, “It is true, my father--come and
see.”



CHAPTER XII

THE BAPTISM OF SOUND


WHAT had happened at Israel’s house during Israel’s absence is a story
that may be quickly told. On the day of his departure Naomi wandered
from room to room, seeming to seek for what she could not find, and in
the evening the black women came upon her in the upper chamber where her
father had read to her at sunset, and she was kneeling by his chair and
the book was in her hands.

“Look at her, poor child,” said Fatimah. “See, she thinks he will come
as usual. God bless her sweet innocent face!”

On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made
her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife
of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly
through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from
there to the gate of the prison.

The next day after that she did not attempt to go abroad, and neither
did she wander through the house, but sat in the same seat constantly,
and seemed to be waiting patiently. She was pale and quiet and
silent; she did not laugh according to her wont, and she had a look of
submission that was very touching to see.

“Now the holy saints have pity on the sweet jewel,” said Fatimah. “How
long will she wait, poor darling?”

On the morning of the day following that her quiet had given place to
restlessness, and her pallor to a burning flush of the face. Her hands
were hot, her head was feverish, and her blind eyes were bloodshot.

It was now plain that the girl was ill, and that Israel’s fears on
setting out from home had been right after all. And making his own
reckoning with Naomi’s condition, Ali went off for the only doctor
living in Tetuan--a Spanish druggist living in the walled lane leading
to the western gate. This good man came to look at Naomi, felt her
pulse, touched her throbbing forehead, with difficulty examined her
tongue, and pronounced her illness to be fever. He gave some homely
directions as to her treatment--for he despaired of administering drugs
to such a one as she was--and promised to return the next day.

About the middle of that night Naomi became delirious. Fatimah stood
constantly by her bed, bathing her hot forehead with vinegar and water;
Habeebah slept in a chair at her feet; and Ali crouched in a corner
outside the door of her room.

The druggist came in the morning, according to his promise; but
there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very
solemnly, and said, “I will come again after two days more, when the
fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out of
Tangier along with me!”

Meantime, Naomi’s delirium continued. It was gentle as her own
spirit tent there was this that was strange and eerie about her
unconsciousness--that whereas she had been dumb while her mind in its
dark cell must have been mistress of itself and of her soul, she spoke
without ceasing throughout the time of her reason’s vanquishment. Not
that her poor tongue in its trouble uttered speech such as those that
heard could follow and understand, but only a restless babble of empty
sounds, yet with tones of varying feeling, sometimes of gladness,
sometimes of sorrow, sometimes of remonstrance, and sometimes of
entreaty.

All that night, and the next night also, the two black women sat
together by her bedside, holding each other’s hands like little children
in great fear. Also Ali crouched again like a dog in the darkness
outside the door, listening in terror to the silvery young voice that
had never echoed in that house before. This was the night when Israel,
sleeping at the squalid inn of the Jews of Wazzan, was hearing Naomi’s
voice in his dreams.

At the first glint of daylight in the morning the lad was up and gone,
and away through the town-gate to the heath beyond, as far as to the
fondak, which stands on the hill above it, that he might strain his
wet eyes in the pitiless sunlight for Israel’s caravan that should soon
come. On the first morning he saw nothing, but on the second morning he
came upon Israel’s men returning without him, and telling their lying
story that he had been stripped of everything by the Sultan at Fez, and
was coming behind them penniless.

Now, Israel was to Ali the greatest, noblest, mightiest man among men.
That he should fall was incredible, and that any man should say he had
fallen was an affront and an outrage. So, stripling as he was, the lad
faced the rascals with the courage of a lion. “Liars and thieves!”
 he cried; “tell that story to another soul in Tetuan, and I will go
straight to the Kaid at the Kasbah, and have every black dog of you all
whipped through the streets for plundering my master.”

The men shouted in derision and passed on, firing their matchlocks as a
mock salute. But Ali had his will of them; they told their tale no
more, and when they entered Tetuan, and their fellows questioned them
concerning their journey, they took refuge in the reticence that sits by
right of nature on the tongues of Moors--they said and knew nothing.

While Ali was on the heath looking out for Israel, the doctor out of
Tangier came to Naomi. The girl was still unconscious, and the
wise leech shook his head over her. Her case was hopeless; she was
sinking--in plain words, she was dying--and if her father did not come
before the morrow he would come too late to find her alive.

Then the black women fell to weeping and wailing, and after that to
spiritual conflict. Both were born in Islam, but Fatimah had secretly
become a Jewess by persuasion of her mistress who was dead. She was,
therefore, for sending for the Chacham. But Habeebah had remained a
Muslim, and she was for calling the Imam. “The Imam is good, the Imam
is holy; who so good and holy as the Imam?” “Nay, but our Sidi holds
not with the Imam, for our lord is a Jew, and our lord is our master, our
lord is our sultan, our lord is our king.” “Shoof! What is Sidi against
paradise? And paradise is for her who makes a follower of Moosa into a
follower of Mohammed. Let but the child die with the Kelmah on her
lips, and we are all three blest for ever--otherwise we will burn
everlastingly in the fires of Jehinnum.” “But, alack! how can the poor
girl say the Kelmah, being as dumb as the grave?” “Then how can she say
the Shemang either?”

Having heard the verdict of the doctor, Ali returned in hot haste and
silenced both the bondwomen: “The Imam is a villain, and the Chacham is
a thief.” There was only one good man left in Tetuan, and that was his
own Taleb, his schoolmaster, the same that had taught him the harp
in the days of the Governor’s marriage. This person was an old negro,
bewrinkled by years, becrippled by ague, once stone deaf, and still
partially so, half blind, and reputed to be only half wise, a liberated
slave from the Sahara, just able to read the Koran and the Torah, and
willing to teach either impartially, according to his knowledge, for he
was neither a Jew nor a Muslim, but a little of both, as he used to say,
and not too much of either. For such a hybrid in a land of intolerance
there must have been no place save the dungeons of the Kasbah, but that
this good nondescript was a privileged pet of everybody. In his dark
cellar, down an alley by the side of the Grand Mosque in the Metamar,
he had sat from early morning until sunset, year in year out, through
thirty years on his rush-covered floor, among successive generations
of his boys; and as often as night fell he had gone hither and thither
among the sick and dying, carrying comfort of kind words, and often meat
and drink of his meagre substance.

Such was Ali’s hero after Israel, and now, in Israel’s absence and his
own great trouble, he tried away for him.

“Father,” cried the lad, “does it not say in the good book that the
prayer of a righteous man availeth much?”

“It does, my son,” said the Taleb “You have truth. What then?”

“Then if you will pray for Naomi she will recover,” said Ali.

It was a sweet instance of simple faith. The old black Taleb dismissed
his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled
to Naomi’s bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her
through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and
then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and
a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and
prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.

The negro’s prayer was simple to childishness. It told God everything;
it recited the facts to the heavenly Father as to one who was far away
and might not know. The maiden was sick unto death. She had been three
days and nights knowing no one, and eating and drinking nothing. She was
blind and dumb and deaf. Her father loved her and was wrapped up in her.
She was his only child, and his wife was dead, and he was a lonely man.
He was away from his home now, and if, when he returned, the girl were
gone and lost--if she were dead and buried--his strong heart would be
broken and his very soul in peril.

Such was the Taleb’s prayer, and such was the scene of it--the dumb
angel of white and crimson turning and tossing on the bed in an aureole
of her streaming yellow hair, and the four black faces about her, eager
and hot and aflame, with closed eyelids and open lips, calling down
mercy out of heaven from the God that might be seen by the soul alone.

And so it was, but whether by chance or Providence let no man dare to
tell, that even while the four black people were yet on their knees by
the bed, the turning and tossing of the white face stopped suddenly and
Naomi lay still on her pillow. The hot flush faded from her cheeks; her
features, which had twitched, were quiet; and her hands, which had been
restless, lay at peace on the counterpane.

The good old Taleb took this for an answer to his prayer, and he shouted
“El hamdu l’Illah!” (Praise be to God), while the big drops coursed down
the deep furrows of his streaming face. And then, as if to complete
the miracle, and to establish the old man’s faith in it, a strange and
wondrous thing befell. First, a thin watery humour flowed from one of
Naomi’s ears, and after that she raised herself on her elbow. Her eyes
were open as if they saw; her lips were parted as though they were
breaking into a smile; she made a long sigh like one who has slept
softly through the night and has just awakened in the morning.

Then, while the black people held their breath in their first moment
of surprise and gladness, her parted lips gave forth a sound. It was
a laugh--a faint, broken, bankrupt echo of her old happy laughter. And
then instantly, almost before the others had heard the sound, and while
the notes of it were yet coming from her tongue, she lifted her idle
hand and covered her ear, and over her face there passed a look of
dread.

So swift had this change been that the bondwomen had not seen it, and
they were shouting “Hallelujah!” with one voice, thinking only that
she who had been dead to them was alive again. But the old Taleb cried
eagerly, “Hush! my children, hush! What is coming is a marvellous thing!
I know what it is--who knows so well as I? Once I was deaf, my children,
but now I hear. Listen! The maiden has had fever--fever of the brain.
Listen! A watery humour had gathered in her head. It has gone, it has
flowed away. Now she will hear. Listen, for it is I that know it--who
knows it so well as I? Yes; she will be no longer deaf. Her ears will be
opened. She will hear. Once she was living in a land of silence; now
she is coming into the land of sound. Blessed be God, for He has wrought
this wondrous work. God is great! God is mighty! Praise the merciful God
for ever! El hamdu l’Illah!”

And marvellous and passing belief as the old Taleb’s story seemed to be,
it appeared to be coming to pass, for even while he spoke, beginning in
a slow whisper and going on with quicker and louder breath, Naomi turned
her face full upon him; and when the black women in their ready faith,
joined in his shouts of praise, she turned her face towards them also;
and wherever a voice sounded in the room she inclined her head towards
it as one who knew the direction of the sounds, and also as one who was
in fear of them.

But, seeing nothing of her look of pain, and knowing nothing but one
thing only, and that was the wondrous and mighty change that she who had
been deaf could now hear, that she who had never before heard speech now
heard their voices as they spoke around her, Ali, in his frantic delight
laughing and crying together, his white teeth aglitter, and his round
black face shining with tears, began to shout and to sing, and to dance
around the bed in wild joy at the miracle which God had wrought in
answer to his old Taleb’s prayer. No heed did he pay to the Taleb’s
cries of warning, but danced on and on, and neither did the bondwomen
see the old man’s uplifted arms or his big lips pursed out in hushes,
so overpowered were they with their delight, so startled and so joy
drunken. But over their tumult there came a wild outburst of piercing
shrieks. They were the cries of Naomi in her blind and sudden terror
at the first sounds that had reached her of human voices. Her face
was blanched, her eyelids were trembling, her lips were restless, her
nostrils quivered, her whole being seemed to be overcome by a vertigo of
dread, and, in the horrible disarray of all her sensations her brain,
on its wakening from its dolorous sleep of three delirious days, was
tottering and reeling at its welcome in this world of noise.

Then Ali ended suddenly his frantic dance, the bondwomen held their
peace in an instant, and blank silence in the chamber followed the
clamour of tongues.

It was at this great moment that Israel, returning from his journey in
the jellab of a Moor, knocked like a stranger at his outer door. When he
entered the chamber, still clad as a torn and ragged man, too eager to
remove the sorry garments which had been given to him on the way, Naomi
was resting against the pillar of the bed. He saw that her countenance
was changed, and that every feature of her face seemed to listen. No
longer was it as the face of a lamb that is simple and content, neither
was it as the face of a child that is peaceful and happy; but it was hot
and perplexed. Fear sat on her face, and wonder and questioning; and
as Fatimah stood by her side, speaking tender words to comfort her, no
cheer did she seem to get from them, but only dread, for she drew away
from her when she spoke, as though the sound of the voice smote her ears
with terror of trouble. All this Israel saw on the instant, and then
his sight grew dim, his heart beat as if it would kill him, a thick
mist seemed to cover everything, and through the dense waves of
semi-consciousness he heard the dull hum of Fatimah’s muffled voice
coming to him as from far away.

“My pretty Naomi! My little heart! My sweet jewel of gold and silver!
It is nothing! Nothing! Look! See! Her father has come back! Her dear
father has come back to her!”

Presently the room ceased to go round and round, and Israel knew that
Naomi’s arms surrounded him, that his own arms enlaced her, and that her
head was pressed hard against his bosom. Yes, it was she! It was Naomi!
Ali had told him truth. She lived! She was well! She could hear! The old
hope that had chirped in his soul was justified, and the dear delicious
dream was come true. Oh! God was great, God was good, God had given him
more than he had asked or deserved!

Thus for some minutes he stood motionless, blessing the God of Jacob,
yet uttering no words, for his heart was too full for speech, only
holding Naomi closely to him, while his tears fell on her blind face.
And the black people in the chamber wept to see it, that not more dumb
in that great hour of gladness was she who was born so than he to whose
house had come the wonderful work that God had wrought.

No heed had Israel given yet to the bodeful signs in Naomi’s face, in
joy over such as were joyful. When he had taken her in his arms she had
known him, and she had clung to him in her glad surprise. But when she
continued to lie on his bosom it was not only because he was her father
and she loved him, and because he had been lost to her and was found, it
was also because he alone was silent of all that were about her.

When he saw this his heart was humbled; but he understood her fears,
that, coming out of a land of great silence, where the voice of man
was never heard, where the air was songless as the air of dreams and
darkling as the air of a tomb, her soul misgave her, and her spirit
trembled in a new world of strange sounds. For what was the ear but a
little dark chamber, a vault, a dungeon in a castle, wherein the soul
was ever passing to and fro, asking for news of the world without?
Through seventeen dark and silent years the soul of Naomi had been
passing and repassing within its beautiful tabernacle of flesh, crying
daily and hourly, “Watchman, what of the world?” At length it had found
an answer, and it was terrified. The world had spoken to her soul and
its voice was like the reverberations of a subterranean cavern, strange
and deep and awful.

In that first moment of Israel’s consciousness after he entered the
room, all four black folks seemed to be speaking together.

Ali was saying, “Father, those dogs and thieves of tentmen and muleteers
returned yesterday, and said--”

And the bondwomen were crying, “Sidi, you were right when you went
away!” “Yes, the dear child was ill!” “Oh, how she missed you when
you were gone.” “She has been delirious, and the doctor, the son of
Tetuan--”

And the old Taleb was muttering, “Master, it is all by God’s mercy. We
prayed for the life of the maiden, and lo! He has given us this gateway
to her spirit as well.”

Then Israel saw that as their voices entered the dark vault of Naomi’s
ears they startled and distressed her. So, to pacify her, he motioned
them out of the chamber. They went away without a word. The reason of
Naomi’s fears began to dawn upon them. An awe seemed to be cast over her
by the solemnity of that great moment. It was like to the birth-moment
of a soul.

And when the black people were gone from the room, Israel closed the
door of it that he might shut out the noises of the streets, for women
were calling to their children without, and the children were still
shouting in their play. This being done, he returned to Naomi and rested
her head against his bosom and soothed her with his hand, and she put
her arms about his neck and clung to him. And while he did so his heart
yearned to speak to her, and to see by her face that she could hear.
Let it be but one word, only one, that she might know her father’s
voice--for she had never once heard it--and answer it with a smile.

“Daughter! My dearest! My darling.”

Only this, nothing more! Only one sweet word of all the unspoken
tenderness which, like a river without any outlet, had been seventeen
years dammed up in his breast. But no, it could not be. He must not
speak lest her face should frown and her arms be drawn away. To see that
would break his heart. Nevertheless, he wrestled with the temptation.
It was terrible. He dared not risk it. So he sat on the bed in silence,
hardly moving, scarcely breathing--a dust-laden man in a ragged jellab,
holding Naomi in his arms.

It was still the month of Ramadhan, and the sun was but three hours set.
In the fondak called El Oosaa, a group of the town Moors, who had fasted
through the day, were feasting and carousing. Over the walls of the
Mellah, from the direction of the Spanish inn at the entrance to the
little tortuous quarter of the shoemakers, there came at intervals a
hubbub of voices, and occasionally wild shouts and cries. The day was
Wednesday, the market-day of Tetuan, and on the open space called the
Feddan many fires were lighted at the mouths of tents, and men and
women and children--country Arabs and Barbers--were squatting around the
charcoal embers eating and drinking and talking and laughing, while the
ruddy glow lit up their swarthy faces in the darkness. But presently the
wing of night fell over both Moorish town and Mellah; the traffic of the
streets came to an end; the “Balak” of the ass-driver was no more heard,
the slipper of the Jew sounded but rarely on the pavement, the fires on
the Feddan died out, the hubbub of the fondak and the wild shouts of the
shoemakers’ quarter were hushed, and quieter and more quiet grew the air
until all was still.

At the coming of peace Naomi’s fears seemed to abate. Her clinging arms
released their hold of her father’s neck, and with a trembling sigh she
dropped back on to the pillow. And in this hour of stillness she
would have slept; but even while Israel was lifting up his heart in
thankfulness to God, that He was making the way of her great journey
easy out of the land of silence into the land of speech, a storm broke
over the town. Through many hot days preceding it had been gathering in
the air, which had the echoing hollowness of a vault. It was loud and
long and terrible. First from the direction of Marteel, over the four
miles which divide Tetuan from the coast, came the warning which the sea
sends before trouble comes to the land--a deep moan as of waters falling
from the sky. Next came the moan of the wind down the valley that opens
on the gate called the Bab el Marsa, and along the river that flows to
the port. Then came the roll of thunder, like a million cannons, down
the gorges of the Reef mountains and across the plain that stretches
far away to Kitan. Last of all, the black clouds of the sky emptied
themselves over the town, and the rain fell in floods on the roof of the
house and on the pavement of the patio, and leapt up again in great loud
drops, making a noise to the ear like to the tramp, tramp, tramp of a
hidden multitude. Thus sound after sound broke over the darkness of the
night in a thousand awful voices, now near, now far, now loud, now
low, now long, now short, now rising, now falling, now rushing, now
running--a mighty tumult and a fearsome anarchy.

At last Naomi’s terror was redoubled. Every sound seemed to smite her
body as a blow. Hitherto she had known one sense only, the sense of
touch, and though now she knew the sense of hearing also, she continued
to refer all sensations to feeling. At the sound of the sea she put out
her arms before her; at the sound of the wind she buried her face in
her palms; and at the sound of the thunder she lifted her hands as if to
protect her head.

Meanwhile, Israel sat beside her and cherished her close at his bosom.
He yearned to speak words of comfort to her, soft words of cheer, tender
words of love, gentle words of hope.

“Be not afraid, my daughter! It is only the wind, it is only the rain;
it is only the thunder. Once you loved to run and race in them. They
shall not harm you, for God is good, and He will keep you safe. There,
there, my little heart! See, your father is with you. He will guard you.
Fear not, my child, fear not!”

Such were the words which Israel yearned to speak in Naomi’s ears,
but, alas! what words could she understand any more than the wind which
moaned about the house and the thunder which rolled overhead? And again
and again, alas! as surely as he spoke to her she must shrink from the
solace of his voice even as she shrank from the tumult of the voices of
the storm.

Israel fell back helpless and heartbroken. He began to see in its
fulness the change which had befallen Naomi, yet not at once to realise
it, so sudden and so numbing was the stroke. He began to know that with
the mighty blessing for which he had hoped and prayed--the blessing of a
pathway to his daughter’s soul--a misfortune had come as well. What was
it to him now that Naomi had ears to hear if she could not understand?
And what was this tempest to the maiden new-born out of the land of
silence into the world of sound, yet still both blind and dumb, but
a circle of darkness alive with creatures that groaned and cried and
shrieked and moved around her?

Thus nothing could Israel do but watch the creeping of Naomi’s terror,
and smooth her forehead and chafe her hands. And this he did, until at
length, in a fresh outbreak of the storm, when the vault of the heavens
seemed rent asunder, a strong delirium took hold of her, and she fell
into a long unconsciousness. Then Israel held back his heart no longer,
but wept above her, and called to her, and cried aloud upon her name--

“Naomi! Naomi! My poor child! My dearest! Hear me! It is nothing!
nothing! Listen! It is gone! Gone!”

With such passionate cries of love and sorrow; Israel gave vent to his
soul in its trouble. And while Naomi lay in her unconsciousness, he knew
not what feelings possessed him, for his heart was in a great turmoil.
Desolate! desolate! All was desolate! His high-built hopes were in
ashes!

Sometimes he remembered the days when the child knew no sorrow, and when
grief came not near her, when she was brighter than the sun which she
could not see and sweeter than the songs which she could not hear, when
she was joyous as a bird in its narrow cage and fretted not at the
bars which bound her, when she laughed as she braided her hair and came
dancing out of her chamber at dawn. And remembering this, he looked down
at her knitted face, and his heart grew bitter, and he lifted up his
voice through the tumult of the storm, and cried again on the God of
Jacob, and rebuked Him for the marvellous work which He had wrought.

If God were an almighty God, surely He looked before and after, and
foresaw what must come to pass. And, foreseeing and knowing all, why had
God answered his prayer? He himself had been a fool. Why had he craved
God’s pity? Once his poor child was blither than the panther of the
wilderness and happier than the young lamb that sports in springtime. If
she was blind, she knew not what it was to see; and if she was deaf, she
knew not what it was to hear; and if she was dumb, she knew not what it
was to speak. Nothing did she miss of sight or sound or speech any more
than of the wings of the eagle or the dove. Yet he would not be content;
he would not be appeased. Oh! subtlety of the devil which had brought
this evil upon him!

But the God whom Israel in his agony and his madness rebuked in this
manner sent His angel to make a great silence, and the storm lapsed to a
breathless quiet.

And when the tempest was gone Naomi’s delirium passed away. She seemed
to look, and nothing could she see; and then to listen, and nothing
could she hear; and then she clasped the hand of her father that lay
over her hand, and sighed and sank down again.

“Ah!”

It was even as if peace had come to her with the thought that she was
back in the land of great silence once again, and that the voices
which had startled her, and the storm which had terrified her, had been
nothing but an evil dream.

In that sweet respite she fell asleep, and Israel forgot the reproaches
with which he had reproached his God, and looked tenderly down at her,
and said within himself, “It was her baptism. Now she will walk the
world with confidence, and never again will she be afraid. Truly the
Lord our God is king over all kingdoms and wise beyond all wisdom!”

Then, with one look backward at Naomi where she slept, he crept out of
the room on tiptoe.



CHAPTER XIII

NAOMI’S GREAT GIFT


With the coming of the gift of hearing, the other gifts with which Naomi
had been gifted in her deafness, and the strange graces with which she
had been graced, seemed suddenly to fall from her as a garment when she
disrobed.

It seemed as though her old sense of touch had become confused by her
new sense of hearing, She lost her way in her father’s house, and though
she could now hear footsteps, she did not appear to know who approached.
They led her into the street, into the Feddan, into the walled lane to
the great gate, into the steep arcades leading to the Kasbah; and no
more as of old did she thread her way through the people, seeming to see
them through the flesh of her face and to salute them with the laugh on
her lips, but only followed on and on with helpless footsteps. They took
her to the hill above the battery, and her breath came quick as she trod
the familiar ways; but when she was come to the summit, no longer did
she exult in her lofty place and drink new life from the rush of mighty
winds about her, but only quaked like a child in terror as she faced the
world unseen beneath and hearkened to the voices rising out of it, and
heard the breeze that had once laved her cheeks now screaming in her
ears. They gave Ali’s harp into her hands, the same that she had played
so strangely at the Kasbah on the marriage of Ben Aboo; but never again
as on that day did she sweep the strings to wild rhapsodies of sound
such as none had heard before and none could follow, but only touched
and fumbled them with deftless fingers that knew no music.

She lost her old power to guide her footsteps and to minister to her
pleasures and to cherish her affections. No longer did she seem to
communicate with Nature by other organs than did the rest of the human
kind. She was a radiant and joyous spirit maid no more, but only a
beautiful blind girl, a sweet human sister that was weak and faint.

Nevertheless, Israel recked nothing of her weakness, for joy at the loss
of those powers over which his enemies throughout seventeen evil years
had bleated and barked “Beelzebub!” And if God in His mercy had taken
the angel out of his house, so strangely gifted, so strangely joyful,
He had given him instead, for the hunger of his heart as a man, a sweet
human daughter, however helpless and frail.

Thus in the first days of Naomi’s great change Israel was content. But
day by day this contentment left him, and he was haunted by strange
sinkings of the heart. Naomi’s frailty appeared to be not only of the
body but also of the spirit. It seemed as if her soul had suddenly
fallen asleep. She betrayed neither joy nor sorrow. No sound escaped her
lips; no thought for herself or for others seemed to animate her. She
neither laughed nor wept. When Israel kissed her pale brow, she did not
stretch out her arms as she had done before to draw down his head to her
lips. Calmly, silently, sadly, gracefully, she passed from day to day,
without feeling and without thought--a beautiful statue of flesh and
blood.

What God was doing with her slumbering spirit then, only He Himself
knows; but the time of her awakening came, and with it came her first
delight in the new gift with which God had gifted her.

To revive her spirits and to quicken her memory, Israel had taken her to
walk in the fields outside the town where she had loved to play in her
childhood--the wild places covered with the peppermint and the pink, the
thyme, the marjoram, and the white broom, where she had gathered flowers
in the old times, when God had taught her. The day was sweet, for it was
the cool of the morning, the air was soft, and the wind was gentle, and
under the shady trees the covert of the reeds lay quiet. And whither
Naomi would, thither they had wandered, without object and without
direction.

On and on, hand in hand, they had walked through the winding paths
of the oleander, between the creeping fences of the broom, and the
sprawling limbs of the prickly pear, until they came to a stream, a
tributary of the Marteel, trickling down from the wild heights of the
Akhmas, over the light pebbles of its narrow bed. And there--but by what
impulse or what chance Israel never knew--Naomi had withdrawn her hand
from his hand; and at the next moment, in scarcely more time than it
took him to stoop to the ground and rise again, suddenly as if she had
sunk into the earth, or been lifted into the sky, Naomi disappeared from
his sight.

Israel pushed the low boughs apart, expecting to find her by his side,
but she was nowhere near. He called her by her name, thinking she would
answer with the only language of her lips, the old language of her
laugh.

“Naomi! Naomi! Come, come, my child, where are you?”

But no sound came back to him.

Again he called, not as before in a tone of remonstrance, but with a
voice of fear.

“Naomi, Naomi! Where are you? where? where?”

Then he listened and waited, yet heard nothing, neither her laugh nor
the rustle of her robe, nor the light beat of her footstep.

Nevertheless, she had passed over the grass from the spot where she had
left him, without waywardness or thought of evil, only missing his hand
and trying to recover it, then becoming afraid and walking rapidly,
until the dense foliage between them had hidden her from sight and
deadened the sound of his voice.

Opening a way between the long leaves of an aloe, Israel found her at
length in the place whereto she had wandered. It was a short bend of the
brook, where dark old trees overshadowed the water with forest gloom.
She was seated on the trunk of a fallen oak, and it seemed as if she had
sat herself down to weep in her dumb trouble, for her blind eyes were
still wet with tears. The river was murmuring at her feet; an old
olive-tree over her head was pattering with its multitudinous tongues;
the little family of a squirrel was chirping by her side, and one tiny
creature of the brood was squirling up her dress; a thrush was swinging
itself on the low bough of the olive and singing as it swung, and a
sheep of solemn face--gaunt and grim and ancient--was standing and
palpitating before her. Bees were humming, grasshoppers were buzzing,
the light wind was whispering, and cattle were lowing in the distance.
The air of that sweet spot in that sweet hour was musical with every
sweet sound of the earth and sky, and fragrant with all the wild odours
of the wood.

“My darling,” cried Israel in the first outburst of his relief, and then
he paused and looked at her again.

The wet eyes were open, and they appeared to see, so radiant was the
light that shone in them. A tender smile played about her mouth; her
head was held forward; her nostrils quivered; and her cheeks were
flushed. She had pushed her hat back from her head, and her yellow hair
had fallen over her neck and breast. One of her hands covered one ear,
and the other strayed among the plants that grew on the bank beside her.
She seemed to be listening intently, eagerly, rapturously. A rare and
radiant joy, a pure and tender delight, appeared to gush out of her
beautiful face. It was almost as though she believed that everything she
heard with the great new gift which God had given her was speaking to
her, and bidding her welcome and offering her love; as if the garrulous
old olive over her head were stretching down his arms to sport with her
hair, and pattering; “Kiss me, little one! kiss me, sweet one! kiss
me! kiss me!”--as if the rippling river at her feet were laughing and
crying, “Catch me, naked feet! catch me, catch me!” as if the thrush
on the bough were singing, “Where from, sunny locks? where from? where
from?”--as if the young squirrel were chirping, “I’m not afraid, not
afraid, not afraid!” and as if the grey old sheep were breathing slowly,
“Pat me, little maiden! you may, you may!”

“God bless her beautiful face!” cried Israel. “She listens with every
feature and every line of it.”

It was the awakening of her soul to the soul of music, and from that day
forward she took pleasure in all sweet and gentle sounds whatsoever--in
the voices of children at play--in the bleat of the goat--in the
footsteps of them she loved--in the hiss and whirr of her mother’s old
spinning-wheel, which now she learned to work--and in Ali’s harp, when
he played it in the patio in the cool of the evening.

But even as no eye can see how the seed which has been sown in the
ground first dies and then springs into life, so no tongue can tell what
change was wrought in the pure soul of Naomi when, after her baptism of
sound, the sweet voices of earth first entered it. Neither she herself
nor any one else ever fully realised what that change was, for it was a
beautiful and holy mystery. It was also a great joy, and she seemed to
give herself up to it. No music ever escaped her, and of all human music
she took most pleasure in the singing of love songs. These she listened
to with a simple and rapt delight; their joy seemed to answer to her
joy, and the joyousness of a song of love seemed to gather in the air
wheresoever she went.

There were few of the kind she ever heard, and few of that few were
beautiful, and none were beautifully sung. Fatimah’s homely ditties were
all she knew, the same that had been crooned to her a thousand times
when she had not heard. Most of these were songs of the desert and the
caravan, telling of musk and ambergris, and odorous locks and dancing
cypress, and liquid ruby, and lips like wine; and some were warm tales
which the good soul herself hardly understood, of enchanting beauties
whose silence was the door of consent, and of wanton nymphs whose love
tore the veil of their chastity.

But one of them was a song of pure and true passion that seemed to be
the yearning cry of a hungering, unfilled, unsatisfied heart to call
down love out of the skies, or else be carried up to it. This had been a
favourite song of Naomi’s mother, and it was from Ruth that Fatimah had
learned it in those anxious watches of the early uncertain days when she
sang it over the cradle to her babe that was deaf after all and did not
hear. Naomi knew nothing of this, but she heard her mother’s song at
last, though silent were the lips that first sang it, and it was her
chief and dear delight.

     O, where is Love?
     Where, where is Love?
     Is it of heavenly birth?
     Is it a thing of earth?
     Where, where is Love?

In her crazy, creechy voice the black woman would sing the song, when
Israel was out of hearing; and the joy Naomi found in it, and the simple
silent arts she used, being mute and blind, to show her pleasure while
it lasted, and to ask for it again when it was done, were very sweet and
touching.

And so it came about at last, that even as the human mother loves
that child most among many children that most is helpless, so the
earth-mother of Naomi made her ears more keen because her eyes were
blind. Thus she seemed to hear many things that are unheard by the rest
of the human family. It is only a dim echo of the outer world that the
ears of men are allowed to hear, just as it is only a dim shadow of the
outer world that the eyes of men are allowed to see; but the ears of
Naomi seemed to hear all.

There is one hearing of men, and another hearing of the beasts, and a
third of the birds, and one hearing differs from another in keenness
even as one sight differs from another in strength. And all the earth
is full of voices, and everything that moves upon the face of it has its
sound; but the bird hears that which is unheard of the beast, and the
beast hears that which is unheard of men. But Naomi appeared to hear all
that is heard of each.

Listening hour after hour, listening always, listening only, with
nothing that she could do but listen, nothing moved on the ground but
she dropped her face, and nothing flew in the sky but she lifted her
eyes. And whereas before the coming of her great gift her face had been
all feeling, and she seemed to feel the sunset, and to feel the sky, and
to feel the thunder and the light, now her face was all hearing, and
her whole body seemed to hear, for she was like a living soul floating
always in a sea of sound.

Thus, day after day, she was busy in her silence and in her darkness,
building up notions of man and of the world by the new gift with which
God had gifted her; but what strange thing the earth was to her then,
what the sun was with its warmth, and what the sea was with its roar,
and what the face of man was, and the eyes of woman, none could know,
and neither could she tell, for her soul was not linked to other
souls--soul to soul, in the chains of speech.

And for all that she could not answer; yet Israel did not forget that,
beside the sounds of earth and sky, Naomi was hearing words, and that
words had wings, and were alive, and, for good or ill, made their mark
on the soul that listened to them. So he continued to read to her out of
the Book of the Law, day after day at sunset, according to his wont and
custom. And when an evil spirit seemed to make a mock at him, and to
say, “Fool! she hears, but does she understand?” he remembered how he
had read to her in the days of her deafness, and he said to himself,
“Shall I have less faith now that she can hear?”

But, though he turned his back on the temptation to let go of Naomi’s
soul at last, yet sometimes his heart misgave him; for when he spoke to
her it seemed to him that he was like a man that shouts into a cavern
and gets back no answer but the sound of his own voice. If he told her
of the sky, that it was broad as the ocean, what could she see of the
great deeps to measure them? And if he told her of the sea, that it was
green as the fields, what could she see of the grass to know its colour?
And sometimes as he spoke to her it smote him suddenly that the words
themselves which he used to speak with were no more to Naomi than the
notes which Ali struck from his dead harp, or the bleat of the goat at
her feet.

Nevertheless, his faith was great, and he said in his heart, “Let the
Lord find His own way to her spirit.” So he continued to speak with
her as often as he was near her, telling her of the little things that
concerned their household, as well as of the greater things it was good
for her soul to know.

It was a touching sight--the lonely man, the outcast among his people,
talking with his daughter though she was blind and dumb, telling her of
God, of heaven, of death and resurrection, strong in his faith that his
words would not fail, but that the casket of her soul would be opened
to receive them, and that they would lie within until the great day of
judgment, when the Lord Himself would call for them.

Did Naomi hear his words to understand them, or did they fall dead on
her ear like birds on a dead sea? In her darkness and her silence was
she putting them together, comparing them, interpreting them, pondering
them, imitating them, gathering food for her mind from them, and solace
for her spirit? Israel did not know; and, watch her face as he would,
he could never learn. Hope! Faith! Trust! What else was left to him? He
clung to all three, he grappled them to him; they were his sheet-anchor
and his pole-star. But one day they seemed to be his calenture also--the
false picture of green fields and sweet female faces that rises before
the eye of the sailor becalmed at sea.

It was some three weeks after his return from his journey, and the
fierce blaze of the sun continued. The storm that had broken over the
town had left no results of coolness or moisture, for the ground had
been baked hard, and the rain had been too short and swift to penetrate
it. And what the withering heat had spared of green leaf and shrub a
deadlier blight had swept away. The locusts had lately come up from
the south and the east, in numbers exceeding imagination, millions on
millions, making the air dark as they passed and obscuring the blue
sky. They had swept the country of its verdure, and left a trail of
desolation behind them. The grass was gone, the bark of the olives and
almonds was stripped away, and the bare trees had the look of winter.

The first to feel the plague had been the cattle and beasts of burden.
Without food to eat or water to drink they had died in hundreds. A
Mukabar, a cemetery, was made for the animals outside the walls of the
town. It was a charnel yard on the hill-side, near to one of the town’s
six gates. The dead creatures were not buried there, but merely cast on
the bare ground to rot and to bleach in the sun and the heated wind. It
was a horrible place.

The skinny dogs of the town soon found it. And after these scavengers
of the East had torn the putrefying flesh and gnawed the multitude of
bones, they prowled around the country, with tongues lolling out, in
search of water. By this time there was none that they could come at
nearer than the sea, and that was salt. Nevertheless, they lapped it, so
burning was their thirst, and went mad, and came back to the town. Then
the people hunted them and killed them.

Now, it chanced that a mad dog from the Mukabar was being hunted to
death on a day when Naomi, who had become accustomed to the tumult of
the streets, had first ventured out in them alone, save for her goat,
that went before her. The goat was grown old, but it was still her
constant companion and also it was now her guide and guardian, for the
little dumb creature seemed to know that she was frail and helpless. And
so it was that she was crossing the Sok el Foki, a market of the town,
and hearkening only to the patter of the feet of the goat going in
front, when suddenly she heard a hundred footsteps hurrying towards her,
with shouts and curses that were loud and deep. She stood in fear on the
spot where she was, and no eyes had she to see what happened next, and
she had none save the goat to tell her.

But out of one of the dark arcades on the left, leading downward from
the hill, the mad dog came running, before a multitude of men and boys.
And flying in its despair, it bit out wildly at whatever lay in its way,
and Naomi, in her blindness, stood straight in front of it. Then she
must have fallen before it, but instantly the goat flung itself across
the dog’s open jaws, and butted at its foaming teeth, and sent up shrill
cries of terror.

The dog stopped a moment, for such love was human, and it seemed as if
the madness of the monster shrank before it. But the people came down
with their wild shouts and curses, and the dog sprang upon the goat and
felled it, and fled away. The people followed it, and then Naomi was
alone in the market-place, and the goat lay at her feet.

Ali found her there, and brought her home to her father’s house in the
Mellah, and her dying champion with her. And out of this hard chance,
and not out of Israel’s teaching, Naomi was first to learn what life is
and what is death. She felt the goat with her hands, and as she did so
her fingers shook. Then she lifted it to its feet, and when they slipped
from under it she raised her white face in wonder. Again she lifted it,
and made strange noises at its ear; but when it did not answer with its
bleat her lips began to tremble. Then she listened for its breathing,
and felt for its breath; but when neither the one came to her ear, nor
the other to her cheek, her own breath beat hot and fast. At length she
fondled it in her arms, and kissed it with her lips; and when it gave
back no sign of motion nor any sound of voice, a wild labouring rose
at her heart. At last, when the power of life was low in it, the goat
opened its heavy eyes upon her and put forth its tongue and licked her
hand. With that last farewell the brave heart of the little creature
broke, and it stretched itself and died.

Israel saw it all. His heart bled to see the parting in silence between
those two, for not more dumb was the goat that now was dead than the
human soul that was left alive. He tried to put the goat from Naomi’s
arms, saying, “It was only a goat, my child; think of it no more,”
 though it smote him with pain to say it, for had not the creature given
its life for her life? And where, O God, was the difference between
them? But Naomi clung to the goat, and her throat swelled and her bosom
fluttered, and her whole body panted, and it was almost as if her soul
were struggling to burst through the bonds that bound it, that she might
speak and ask and know.

“Oh, what does it mean? Why is it? Why? Why?”

Such were the questions that seemed ready to break from her tongue. And,
thinking to answer her, Israel drew her to him and said, “It is dead, my
child--the goat is dead.”

But as he spoke that word he saw by her face, as by a flash of light in
a dark place, that, often as he had told her of death, never until that
hour had she known what it was. Then, if the words that he had spoken
of death had carried no meaning, what could he hope of the words that
he had spoken of life, and of the little things which concerned their
household? And if Naomi had not heard the words he had said of these--if
she had not pondered and interpreted them--if they had fallen on her ear
only as voices in a dark cavern--only as dead birds on a dead sea--what
of the other words, the greater words, the words of the Book of the Law
and the Prophets, the words of heaven and of the resurrection and of God?

Had the hope of his heart been vanity? Did Naomi know nothing? Was her
great gift a mockery?

Israel’s feet were set in a slippery place. Why had he boasted himself
of God’s mercy? What were ears to hear to her that could not understand?
Only a torment, a terror, a plague, a perpetual desolation! When Naomi
had heard nothing she had known nothing, and never had her spirit asked
and cried in vain. Now she was dumb for the first time, being no longer
deaf. Miserable man that he was, why had the Lord heard his supplication
and why had He received his prayer?

But, repenting of such reproaches, in memory of the joy that Naomi’s new
gift had given her, he called on God to give her speech as well.

“Give her speech, O Lord!” he cried, “speech that shall lift her above
the creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know!
Give her speech, O God my God, and Thy servant will be satisfied!”



CHAPTER XIV

ISRAEL AT SHAWAN


AFTER Israel’s return from his journey he had followed the precepts of
the young Mahdi of Mequinez. Taking a view of his situation, that by his
hardness of heart in the early days, and by base submission to the will
of Katrina, the Kaid’s Christian wife, in the later ones, he had filled
the land with miseries, he now spared no cost to restore what he had
unjustly extorted. So to him that had paid double in the taxings he had
returned double--once for the tax and once for the excess; and if any
man, having been unjustly taxed for the Kaid’s tribute, had given
bond on his lands for his debt and been cast into the Kasbah and
died, without ransoming them, then to his children he had returned
fourfold--double for the lands and double for the death. Israel had done
this continually, and said nothing to Ben Aboo, but paid all charges out
of his own purse, so that from being a rich man he had fallen within
a month to the condition of a poor one, for what was one man’s wealth
among so many? Yet no goodwill had he won thereby, but only pity and
contempt, for the people that had taken his money had thanked the Kaid
for it, who, according to their supposals, had called on him to correct
what he had done amiss. And with Ben Aboo himself he had fared no
better, for the Basha was provoked to anger with him when he heard from
Katrina of the good money that he had been casting away in pity for the
poor.

“What have I told you a score of times?” said the woman. “That man has
mints of money.”

“My money, burn his grandfather,” said Ben Aboo.

Thus, on every side Israel had fallen in the world’s reckoning. When he
lifted his hand from off that plough wherewith he had done the devil’s
work, he had made many enemies, and such as he had before he had made
more powerful. People who had showed him lip-service when he was thought
to be rich did not conceal the joy they had that he was brought down
so near to be a beggar. Upstarts, who owed their promotion to his
intercession, found in his charities an easy handle given them to be
insolent, for, by carrying to Katrina their secret messages of his mercy
to the people, they brought things at length to such a pass between him
and the Kaid that Ben Aboo openly upbraided Israel for his weakness, not
once or twice but many times.

“And pray what is this I hear of your fine charities, master Israel?”
 said Ben Aboo. “Ah, do not look surprised. There are little birds enough
to twitter of such follies. So you are throwing away silver like bones
to the dogs! Pity you’ve got too much of it, Israel ben Oliel; pity
you’ve got too much of it, I say.”

“The people are poor, Lord Basha,” said Israel; “they are famishing, and
they have no refuge save with God and with us.”

“Tut!” cried Ben Aboo. “A famine in my bashalic! Let no man dare to say
so. The whining dogs are preying upon your simpleness, mistress Israel.
You poor old grandmother! I always suspected,” he added, facing about
upon his attendants, “I always suspected that I was served by a woman.
Now I am sure of it.”

Israel felt the indignity. He had given good proof of his manhood in the
past by standing five-and-twenty years scapegoat for Ben Aboo between
him and his people, making him rich by his extortions, keeping him safe
in his seat, and thereby saving him from the wooden jellab which Abd
er-Rahman, the Sultan, kept for Kaids that could not pay. But Israel
mastered his anger and held his peace.

Word went through the town that Israel had fallen from the favour of
the Basha, and then some of the more bold and free laughed at him in
the streets when they saw him relieve the miseries of the poor, thinking
himself accountable to God for their sufferings. He could have crushed
the better part of his insulters to death in his brawny arms, but he was
slow to anger and long-suffering. All the heed he paid to their insults
was to do his good work with more secrecy.

Remembering his Moorish jellab, and how effectually it had disguised
him on the night of his return home, he had recourse to it in this
difficulty. When darkness fell he donned it again, drawing the hood well
down over his black Jewish skull-cap and as far as might be over his
face. In this innocent disguise he went out night after night for many
nights among the poorer Moors that lived in the dismal quarters of the
grain markets near the Bab Ramooz. How he bore himself being there,
with what harmless deceptions he unburdened his soul by stealth, what
guileless pretences he made that he might restore to the poor the money
that had been stolen from them, would be a long story to tell.

“Who are you?” he was asked a hundred times.

“A friend,” he answered

“Who told you of our trouble?”

“Allah has angels,” he would reply.

Often, on his nightly rambles, he heard himself reviled, and saw the
very children of the streets spit over their fingers at the mention
of his name. And sometimes as he passed he heard blind people whisper
together and say, “He is a saint. He comes from the Kabar at nightfall.
Allah sends him to help poor men who have been in the clutches of Israel
the Jew.”

Nevertheless, Israel kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for
good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask
nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it
was the breath of angels.

One day, about a month after his return from his journey, when he
was near to the end of his substance, a message came to him that the
followers of Absalam were perishing of hunger in their prison at Shawan.
Their relatives in Tetuan had found them in food until now, but the
plague of the locust had fallen on the bread-winners, and they had no
more bread to send. Israel concluded that it was his duty to succour
them. From a just view of his responsibilities he had gone on to a
morbid one. If in the Judgment the blood of the people of Absalam cried
to God against him, he himself, and not Ben Aboo, would be cast out into
hell.

Israel juggled with his heart no further, but straightway began to take
a view of his condition. Then he saw, to his dismay, that little as he
had thought he possessed, even less remained to him out of the wreck of
his riches. Only one thing he had still, but that was a thing so dear to
his heart that he had never looked to part with it. It was the casket
of his dead wife’s jewels. Nevertheless, in his extremity he resolved to
sell it now, and, taking the key, he went up to the room where he kept
it--a closet that was sacred to the relics of her who lay in his heart
for ever, but in his house no more.

Naomi went up with him, and when he had broken the seal from the
doorpost, and the little door creaked back on its hinge, the ashy odour
came out to them of a chamber long shut up. It was just as if the buried
air itself had fallen in death to dust, for the dust of the years lay
on everything. But under its dark mantle were soft silks and delicate
shawls and gauzy haiks, and veils and embroidered sashes and light red
slippers, and many dainty things such as women love. And to him that
came again after ten heavy years they were as a dream of her that had
worn them when she was young that now was dead when she was beautiful
that now was in the grave.

“Ah me, ah me! Ruth! My Ruth!” he murmured. “This was her shawl. I
brought it from Wazzan. . . . And these slippers--they came from Rabat.
Poor girl, poor girl! . . . . This sash, too, it used to be yellow and
white. How well I remember the first time she wore it! She had put it
over her head for a hood, pretending to be a Moorish woman. But her
brown curls fell out over her face, or she could not imprison them. And
then she laughed. My poor dear girl. How happy we were once in spite of
everything! It is all like yesterday. When I think Ah no, I must think
no more, I must think no more.”

Israel had little heart for such visions, so he turned to the casket of
the jewels where it stood by the wall. With trembling hands he took it
and opened it, and here within were necklaces and bracelets, and rings
and earrings, glistening of gold and rubies under their covering of
dust. He lifted them one by one over his wrinkled fingers, and looked at
them while his eyes grew wet.

“Not for myself,” he murmured, “not for myself would I have sold them,
not for bread to eat or water to drink; no, not for a wilderness of
worlds!”

All this time he had given little thought to Naomi, where she stood
by his side, but in her darkness and silence she touched the silks and
looked serious, and the slippers and looked perplexed, and now at the
jingling of the jewels she stretched out her hand and took one of
them from her father’s fingers, and feeling it, and finding it to be a
necklace, she clasped it about her neck and laughed.

At the sound of her laughter Israel shook like a reed. It brought back
the memory of the day when she danced to her mother’s death, decked in
that same necklace and those same ornaments. More on this head Israel
could not think and hold to his purpose, so he took the jewels from
Naomi’s neck and returned them to the casket, and hastened away with it
to a man to whom he designed to sell it.

This was no other than Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor box of the
Jews; for as well as a usurer he was a silversmith, and kept his shop
in the Sok el Foki. Israel was moved to go to this person by the
remembrance of two things, of which either seemed enough for his
preference--first, that he had bought the jewels of Reuben in the
beginning, and next, the Reuben had never since ceased to speak of
them in Tetuan as priceless beyond the gems of Ethiopia and the gold of
Ophir.

But when Israel came to him now with the casket that he might buy, he
eyed both with looks of indifference, though it was more dear to his
covetous and revengeful heart that Israel should humble himself in his
need, and bring these jewels, than almost any other satisfaction that
could come to it.

“And what is this that you bring me?” said Reuben languidly.

“A case of jewels,” said Israel, with a downward look.

“Jewels? umph! what jewels?”

“My poor wife’s. You know them, Reuben See!”

Israel opened the casket.

“Ah, your wife’s. Umph! yes, I suppose I must have seen them somewhere.”

“You have seen them here, Reuben.”

“Here?--do you say here?”

“Reuben, you sold them to me eighteen years ago.”

“Sold them to you? Never. I don’t remember it. Surely you must be
mistaken. I can never have dealt in things like these.”

Reuben had taken the casket in his hands, and was pursing up his lips in
expressions of contempt.

Israel watched him closely. “Give them back to me,” he said; “I can go
elsewhere. I have no time for wrangling.”

Reuben’s lip straightened instantly. “Wrangling? Who is wrangling,
brother? You are too impatient, Sidi.”

“I am in haste,” said Israel.

“Ah!”

There was an ominous silence, and then in a cold voice Reuben said,
“The things are well enough in their way. What do you wish me to do with
them?”

“To buy them,” said Israel.

“_Buy_ them?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want them.”

“Are they worth your money?--you don’t want that either.”

“Umph!”

A gleam of mockery passed over Reuben’s face, and he proceeded to
examine the casket. One by one he trifled with the gems--the rich onyx,
the sapphire, the crystal, the coral, the pearl, the ruby, and the
topaz, and first he pushed them from him, and then he drew them back
again. And seeing them thus cheapened in Reuben’s hairy fingers, the
precious jewels which had clasped his Ruth’s soft wrist and her white
neck, Israel could scarcely hold back his hand from snatching them away.
But how can he that is poor answer him that is rich? So Israel put his
twitching hands behind him, remembering Naomi and the poor people of
Absalam, and when at length Reuben tendered him for the casket one half
what he had paid for it, he took the money in silence and went his way.

“Five hundred dollars--I can give no more,” Reuben had said.

“Do you say five hundred--five?”

“Five--take it or leave it.”

It was market morning, and the market-square as Israel passed through
was a busy and noisy place. The grocers squatted within their narrow
wooden boxes turned on their sides, one half of the lid propped up as a
shelter from the sun, the other half hung down as a counter, whereon lay
raisins and figs, and melons and dates. On the unpaved ground the bakers
crouched in irregular lines. They were women enveloped in monstrous
straw hats, with big round cakes of bread exposed for sale on rush mats
at their feet. Under arcades of dried leaves--made, like desert graves,
of upright poles and dry branches thrown across--the butchers lay at
their ease, flicking the flies from their discoloured meat. “Buy! buy!
buy!” they all shouted together. A dense throng of the poor passed
between them in torn jellabs and soiled turbans, and haggled and bought.
Asses and mules crushed through amid shouts of “Arrah!” “Arrah!” and
“Balak!” “Ba-lak!” It was a lively scene, with more than enough of
bustle and swearing and vociferation.

There was more than enough of lying and cheating also, both practised
with subtle and half-conscious humour. Inside a booth for the sale of
sugar in loaf and sack a man sat fingering a rosary and mumbling prayers
for penance. “God forgive me,” he muttered, “_God forgive me, God
forgive me,_” and at every repetition he passed a bead. A customer
approached, touched a sugar loaf and asked, “How much?” The merchant
continued his prayers and did his business at a breath. “(_God forgive
me_) How much? (_God forgive me_) Four pesetas (_God forgive me_),” and
round went the restless rosary. “Too much,” said the buyer; “I’ll give
three.” The merchant went on with his prayers, and answered, “(_God
forgive me_) Couldn’t take it for as much as you might put in your tooth
(_God forgive me_); gave four myself (_God forgive me_).” “Then I’ll
leave it, old sweet-tooth,” said the buyer, as he moved away. “Here!
take it for nothing (_God forgive me_),” cried the merchant after the
retreating figure. “(_God forgive me_) I’m giving it away (_God forgive
me_); I’ll starve, but no matter (_God forgive me_), you are my brother
(_God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me_).”

Israel bought the bread and the meat, the raisins and the figs which the
prisoners needed--enough for the present and for many days to come. Then
he hired six mules with burdas to bear the food to Shawan, and a man two
days to lead them. Also he hired mules for himself and Ali, for he knew
full well that, unless with his own eyes he saw the followers of Absalam
receive what he had bought, no chance was there, in these days of
famine, that it would ever reach them. And, all being ready for his
short journey, he set out in the middle of the day, when the sun was
highest, hoping that the town would then be at rest, and thinking to
escape observation.

His expectation was so far justified that the market-place, when he came
to it again, with his little caravan going before him, was silent and
deserted. But, coming into the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
at which the Shawan road enters, he encountered a great throng and a
strange procession. It was a procession of penance and petition, asking
God to wipe out the plague of locusts that was destroying the land and
eating up the bread of its children. A venerable Jew, with long white
beard, walked side by side with a Moor of great stature, enshrouded in
the folds of his snow-white haik. These were the chief Rabbi of the Jews
and the Imam of the Muslims, and behind them other Jews and Moors
walked abreast in the burning sun. All were barefooted, and such as were
Berbers were bareheaded also.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate and Merciful!” the Imam cried,
and the Muslims echoed him.

“By the God of Jacob!” the Rabbi prayed, and the Jews repeated the words
after him.

“Spare us! Spare the land!” they all cried together. “Send rain to
destroy the eggs of the locust!” cried the Rabbi. “Else will they
rise on the ground in the sunshine like rice on the granary floor; and
neither fire nor river nor the army of the Sultan will stop them; and we
ourselves will die, and our children with us!”

And the Jews cried, “God of Jacob, be our refuge.”

And the Muslims shouted, “Allah, save us!”

It was a strange sight to look upon in that land of intolerance--the
haughty Moor and the despised Jew, with all petty hatreds sunk out of
sight and forgotten in the grip of the death that threatened both alike,
walking and praying in the public streets together.

Israel drew close to the wall and passed by unobserved. And being come
into the open road outside the town, he began to take a view of the
motives that had brought him away from his home again. Then he saw that,
if he was not a hypocrite like Reuben, no credit could he give himself
for what he was doing, and if he was poor who had before been rich, no
merit could he make of his poverty.

“Naomi, Naomi, all for her, all for her,” he thought. Naomi was his hope
and his salvation. His faith in God was his love of the child. He
was only bribing God to give her grace. And well he knew it, while he
journeyed towards the prison behind his six mules laden with bread for
them that lay there, that, much as he owed them, being a cause of their
miseries, the mercy he was about to show them was but as mercy shown to
himself. So the nearer he came to it the lower his head sank into his
breast, as if the sun itself that beat down so fiercely upon his head
had eyes to peer into his deceiving soul.

The town of Shawan lies sixty miles south of Tetuan in the northern half
of the territory of the tribe of Akhmas, and the sun was two hours set
when Israel entered its beautiful valley between the two arms of
the mountain called Jebel Sheshawan. Going through the orchards and
vineyards that were round it, he was recognised by certain Jews; tanners
and pannier-makers, who in the days of his harder rule had fled from
Tetuan and his heavy taxings.

“It’s Israel ben Oliel,” whispered one.

“God of Jacob, save us!” whispered another.

“He has followed us for the arrears of taxes.”

“We must fly.”

“Let us go home first.”

“No time for that.”

“There is Rachel--”

“She’s a woman.”

“But I must warn my son--he has children.”

“Then you are lost. Come on.”

Before he reached the rude old masonry that had once been the fortress
and was now the prison, the poor followers of Absalam, who lay within,
had heard that he was coming, and, in their despair and the wild
disorder of all their senses, they looked for nothing but death from his
visit, as if they were to be cut to pieces instantly. Men and women
and young children, gaunt with hunger and begrimed with dirt, some
with faces that were hard and stony, some with faces that were weak and
simple, some with eyes that were red as blood, all weary with waiting
and wasted with long pain, ran hither and thither in the gloom of the
foul place where they were immured together. Shedding tears, beating
their flesh, and crying out with woeful clamour, these unhappy creatures
of God, who had been great of soul when they sang their death-song with
the precipice behind them and the soldiers in front, now quaked for
the miserable lives which they preserved in hunger and cherished in
bitterness.

By help of the seal of his master, which he always carried, Israel found
his way into the courtyard of the prison. The prisoners, who had been
gathered there for his inspection, heard his footsteps, and by one
impulse, as if an angel from heaven had summoned them, they fell to
their knees about the door whereby he must enter, men behind and women
in front, and mothers holding out their babes before their breasts so
that he might see them first, and have mercy upon them if he had a heart
made for pity.

Then the door of the place was thrown open, and Israel entered. His head
was bowed down, and his feet were bare. The people drew their breath in
wonder.

“Arise,” he said; “I mean you no harm! See! Here is bread! Take it, and
God bless you!”

So saying, he motioned with his trembling hand to where Ali and the
muleteer brought in the burden of food behind him.

And when the poor souls could believe it at last, that he whom they had
looked for as their judge had come as their saviour, their hearts surged
within them. Their hunger left them, and only the children could eat.
For a moment they stood in silence about Israel, and their tears stained
their wasted faces. And Israel, in their midst, tasted a new joy in his
new poverty such as his riches had never brought him--no, not once in
all the days of his old prosperity.

At length an old man--he was a Muslim--looked steadily into Israel’s
face and said, “May the God of Jacob bless thee also, brother!”

After that they all recovered their voices and began to thank him out of
their blind gratitude, falling to their knees at his feet as before, yet
with hearts so different.

“May the Father of the fatherless requite thee!”

“May the child of thy wife be blessed!”

“Stop,” he cried; “stop! you don’t know what you are saying.”

He turned away from them with a look of pain, as if their words had
stung him. They followed him and touched his kaftan with their lips;
they pushed their children under his hands for his blessing.

“No, no,” he cried; “no, no, no!”

Then he passed out of the place with rapid steps and fled from the town
like one who was ashamed.



CHAPTER XV

THE MEETING ON THE SOK


Although Israel did not know it, and in the hunger of his heart he would
have given all the world to learn it, yet if any man could have peered
into the dark chamber where the spirit of Naomi had dwelt seventeen
years in silence, he would have seen that, dear as the child was to the
father, still dearer and more needful was the father to the child. Since
her mother left her he had been eyes of her eyes and ears of her ears,
touching her hand for assent, patting her head for approval, and guiding
her fingers to teach them signs.

Thus Israel was more to Naomi than any father before to any daughter,
more to her than mother or sister or brother or kindred; for he was her
sole gateway to the world she lived in, the one alley whereby her spirit
gazed upon it, the key that opened the closed doors of her soul; and
without him neither could the world come in to her, nor could she go out
to the world. Soft and beautiful was the commerce between them, mute on
one side of all language save tears and kisses, like the commerce of a
mother with her first-born child, as holy in love, as sweet in mystery
as pure from taint, and as deep in tenderness. While her father was with
her, then only did Naomi seem to live, and her happy heart to be full of
wonder at the strange new things that flowed in upon it. And when he was
gone from her, she was merely a spirit barred and shut within her body’s
close abode, waiting to be born anew.

When Israel made ready to go to Shawan, Naomi clung to him to hinder
him, as if remembering his long absence when he went to Fez, and
connecting it with the illness that came to her in his absence; or
as seeming to see, with those eyes that were blind to the ways of the
world, what was to befall him before he returned. He put her from him
with many tender words, and smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead,
as though to chide her while he blessed her for so much love. But her
dread increased, and she held to him like a child to its mother’s robe.
And at last, when he unloosed her hands and pushed them away as if in
anger, and after that laughed lightly as if to tell her that he knew her
meaning yet had no fear, her trouble rose to a storm and she fell to a
fit of weeping.

“Tut! tut! what is this?” he said. “I will be back to-morrow. Do you
hear, my child?--tomorrow! At sunset to-morrow.”

When he was gone, the terror that had so suddenly possessed her seemed
to increase. Her face was red, her mouth was dry, her eyelids quivered,
and her hands were restless. If she sat she rose quickly; if she stood
she walked again more fast. Sometimes she listened with head aside,
sometimes moaned, sometimes wept outright, and sometimes she muttered to
herself in noises such as none had heard from her lips before.

The bondwomen could find no-way to comfort her. Indeed, the trouble of
her heart took hold of them. When she plucked Fatimah by the gown, and
with her blind eyes, that were also wet, seemed to look sadly into the
black woman’s face, as if asking for her father, like a dog for its
master that is dead, Fatimah shed tears as well, partly in pity of her
fears, and partly in terror of the unknown troubles still to come which
God Himself might have revealed to her.

“Alas! little dumb soul, what is to happen now?” cried Fatimah.

“Alack! girl,” said Habeebah, “the maid is sickening again.”

And this was all that the good souls could make of her restless
agitation. She slept that night from sheer exhaustion, a deep lethargic
slumber, apparently broken once or twice by troubled dreams. When she
awoke in the morning at the first sound of the voice of the mooddin, the
evil dreams seemed to be with her still. She appeared to be moving along
in them like one spell-bound by a great dread that she could not utter,
as if she were living through a nightmare of the day. Then long hour
followed long hour, but the inquietude of her mood did not abate. Her
bosom heaved, her throat throbbed, her excitement became hysterical.
Sometimes she broke into wild, inarticulate shouts, and sometimes the
black women could have believed, in spite of knowledge and reason, that
she was muttering and speaking words, though with a wild disorder of
utterance.

At last the day waned and the sun went down. Naomi seemed to know when
this occurred, for she could scent the cool air. Then, with a fresh
intentness, she listened to the footsteps outside, and, having listened,
her trouble increased. What did Naomi hear? The black women could hear
nothing save the common sounds of the streets--the shouts of children
at play, the calls of women, the cries of the mule-drivers, and now and
again the piercing shrieks of a black story-teller from the town of
the Moors--only this varied flow of voices, and under it the indistinct
murmur of multitudinous life coming and going on every side.

Did other sounds come to Naomi’s ears? Was her spiritual power, which
was unclogged by any grosser sense than that of hearing, conscious of
some terrible undertone of impending trouble? Or was her disquietude no
more than recollection of her father’s promise to be back at sunset, and
mere anxiety for his return? Fatimah and Habeebah knew nothing and saw
nothing. All that they could do was to wring their hands.

Meantime, Naomi’s agitation became yet more restless, and nothing would
serve her at last but that she should go out into the streets. And the
black women, seeing her so steadfastly minded, and being affected by her
fears, made her ready, and themselves as well, and then all three went
out together.

“Where are we going?” said Habeebah.

“Nay, how should I know?” said Fatimah.

“We are fools,” said Habeebah.

It was now an hour after sunset, the light was fading, and the traffic
was sinking down. Only at the gate of the Mellah, which, contrary to
custom, had not yet been closed, was the throng still dense. A group of
Jews stood under it in earnest and passionate talk. There was a strange
and bodeful silence on every side. The coffee-house of the Moors beyond
the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was
empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their
circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These
professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been
absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were
silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many
voices, from great numbers gathered within.

“The girl was right,” said Fatimah; “something has happened.”

“What is it?” said Habeebah.

“Nay, how should I know that either?” said Fatimah.

“I tell you we are a pair of fools,” said Habeebah.

Meantime Naomi held their hands, and they must needs follow where she
led. Her body was between them; they were borne along by her feeble
frame as by an irresistible force. And pitiful it would have seemed,
and perhaps foolish also, if any human eye had seen them then, these
helpless children of God, going whither they knew not and wherefore they
knew not, save that a fear that was like to madness drew them on.

“Listen! I hear something,” said Fatimah.

“Where?” said Habeebah.

“The way we are going,” said Fatimah.

On and on Naomi passed from street to street. They were the same streets
whereby she had returned to her father’s house on the day that her
goat was slain. Never since then had she trodden them, but she neither
altered not turned aside to the right or the left, but made straight
forward, until she came to the Sok el Foki, and to the place where the
goat had fallen before the foaming jaws of the dog from the Mukabar.
Then she could go no farther.

“Holy saints, what is this?” cried Habeebah.

“Didn’t I tell you--the girl heard something?” said Fatimah.

“God’s face shine on us,” said Habeebah. “What is all this crowd?”

An immense throng covered the upper half of the market-square, and
overflowed into the streets and arched alleys leading to the Kasbah. It
was not a close and dense crowd of white-hooded forms such as gathered
on that spot on market morning--a seething, steaming, moving mass of
haiks and jellabs and Maghribi blankets, with here and there a bare
shaven head and plaited crown-lock--but a great crowd of dark figures
in black gowns and skull-caps. The assemblage was of Jews only--Jews of
every age and class and condition, from the comely young Jewish butcher
in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
braid on his new kaftan.

They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
impassively, at the vast company of Jews.

And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.

Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
muttering to themselves, “It is written,” they had returned to their
synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to know
for whose cause the evil was upon them.

They were more than a hundred and twenty families, and had thought they
were therefore entitled to elect a Synhedrin. This was in defiance
of ceremonial law, for they knew full well that the formation of a
Synhedrin and the right to try a capital charge had long been forbidden.
But they were face to face with death, and hence the anachronism had
been adopted, and they had fallen back on the custom of their fathers.
So three-and-twenty judges they had appointed, without usurers, or
slave-dealers, or gamblers, or aged men or childless ones.

The judges had sat in session the same night, and their judgment had
been unanimous. The lot of Jonah had fallen on Israel. He had sold
himself to their masters and enemies, the Moors, against the hope and
interest of his own people; he had driven some of the sons of his race
and nation into exile in distant cities; he had brought others to the
Kasbah, and yet others to death: he was a man at open enmity with God,
and God had given him, as a mark of His displeasure, a child who was
cursed with devils, a daughter who had been born blind and dumb and
deaf, and was still without sight and speech.

Could the hand of God’s anger be more plain if it were printed in fire
upon the sky? Israel was the evil one for whose sin they suffered this
devastating plague. The Lord was rebuking them for sparing him, even as
He had rebuked Saul for sparing the king and cattle of the Amalekites.
Seventeen years and more he had been among them without being of them,
never entering a synagogue, never observing a fast, never joining in a
feast. Not until their judgment went out against him would God’s anger
be appeased. Let them cut him off from the children of his race, and the
blessed rain would fall from heaven, and the thirsty earth would drink
it, and the eggs of the locust would be destroyed. But let them put
off any longer their rightful task and duty before God and before the
people, and their evil time would soon come. Within eight-and-twenty
days the eggs would be hatched, and within eight-and-forty other
days the young locust would have wings. Before the end of those
seventy-and-six days the harvest of wheat and barley would be yellow to
the scythe and ripe for the granary, but the locust would cover the face
of the earth, and there would be no grain to gather. The scythe would be
idle, the granaries would be empty, the tillers of the ground would come
hungry into the markets, and they themselves that were town-dwellers
and tradesmen would be perishing for bread, both they and their children
with them.

Thus in Israel’s absence, while he was away at Shawan, the
three-and-twenty judges of the new Synhedrin of Tetuan had--contrary to
Jewish custom--tried and convicted him. God would not let them perish
for this man’s life, and neither would He charge them with his blood.

Nevertheless, judges though they were, they could not kill him. They
could only appeal against him to the Kaid. And what could they say? That
the Lord had sent this plague of locusts in punishment of Israel’s sin?
Ben Aboo would laugh in their faces and answer them, “It is written.”
 That to appease God’s wrath it was expedient that this Jew should die?
Convince the Muslim that a Jew had brought this desolation upon the land
of the Shereefs, and he would arise, and his soldiers with him, and the
whole community of the Jewish people would be destroyed.

The judges had laid their heads together. It was idle to appeal to Ben
Aboo against Israel on any ground of belief. Nay, it was more than idle,
for it was dangerous. There was nothing in common between his faith and
their own. His God was not their God, save in name only. The one was
Allah, great, stern, relentless, inexorable, not to be moved striding
on to an inevitable end, heedless of man and trampling upon him--though
sometimes mocked with the names of the Compassionate and the Merciful.
But the other was Jehovah, the father of His people Israel, caring for
them, upholding them, guiding the world for them, conquering for them;
but visiting His anger upon them when they fell away from Him.

The three-and-twenty judges in session in the synagogue up the narrow
lane of the Sok el Foki had sat far into the night, with the light of
the oil-lamps gleaming on their perplexed and ashen faces. Some other
ground of appeal against Israel had to be found, and they could not find
it. At length they had remembered that, by ancient law and custom the
trial of an Israelite, for life or death, must end an hour after sunset.
Also they had been reminded that the day that heard the evidence in a
capital case must not be the same whereon the verdict was pronounced. So
they had broken up and returned home. And, going out at the gate, they
had told the crowds that waited there that judgment had fallen upon
Israel ben Oliel, but that his doom could not be made known until sunset
on the following day.

That time was now come. In eagerness and impatience, in hot blood and
anger, the people had gathered in the Sok three hours after midday. The
Judges had reassembled in the synagogue in the early morning. They had
not broken bread since yesterday, for the day that condemned a son of
Israel to death must be a fast-day to his judges.

As the afternoon wore on, the doors of the synagogue were thrown open.
The sentence was not ready yet, but the judges in council were near
to their decision. At the open door the reader of the synagogue had
stationed himself, holding a flag in his hand. Under the gate of the
Mellah a second messenger was standing, so placed that he could see the
movement of the flag. If the flag fell, the sentence would be “death,”
 and the man under the gate would carry the tidings to the people
gathered in the market-place. Then the three-and-twenty judges would
come in procession and tell what steps had been taken that the doom
pronounced might be carried into effect.

Amid all their loud uproar, and notwithstanding the wild anger which
seemed to consume them, the people turned at intervals of a few minutes
to glance back towards the Mellah gate.

If the angels were looking down, surely it was a pitiful sight--these
children of Zion in a strange land, where they were held as dogs and
vermin and human scavengers to the Muslim; thinking and speaking and
acting as their fathers had done any time for five thousand years
before; again judging it expedient that one man should die rather than
the whole people be brought to destruction; again probing their crafty
heads, if not their hearts, for an artifice whereby their scapegoat
might be killed by the hand of their enemy; children indeed, for all
that some of their heads were bald, and some of their beards were
grizzled, and some of their faces were wrinkled and hard and fierce;
little children of God writhing in the grip of their great trouble.

Such was the scene to which Naomi had come, and such had been the doings
of the town since the hour when her father left her. What hand had led
her? What power had taught her? Was it merely that her far-reaching
ears had heard the tumult? Had some unknown sense, groping in darkness,
filled her with a vague terror, too indefinite to be called a thought,
of great and impending evil? Or was it some other influence, some higher
leading? Was it that the Lord was in His heaven that night as always,
and that when the two black bondwomen in their helpless fear were
following the blind maiden through the darkening streets she in her turn
was following God?

When Fatimah and Habeebah saw what it was to which Naomi had led them,
though they were sorely concerned at it, yet they were relieved as well,
and put by the worst of the fears with which her strange behaviour had
infected them. And remembering that she was the daughter of Israel, and
they were his servants, and neither thinking themselves safe from
danger if they stayed any longer where his name was bandied about as a
reproach, nor fully knowing how many of the curses that were heaped upon
him found a way to Naomi’s mind, they were for turning again and going
back to the house.

“Come,” said Habeebah; “let us go--we are not safe.”

“Yes,” said Fatimah; “let us take the poor child back.”

“Come along, then,” said Habeebah, and she laid hold of Naomi’s hand.

“Naomi, Naomi,” whispered Fatimah in the girl’s ear, “we are going home.
Come, dearest, come.”

But Naomi was not to be moved. No gentle voice availed to stir her.
She stood where she had placed herself on the outskirts of the crowd,
motionless save for her heaving bosom and trembling limbs, and silent
save for her loud breathing and the low muttering of her pale lips, yet
listening eagerly with her neck outstretched.

And if, as she listened, any human eye could have looked in on her
dumb and imprisoned soul, the tumult it would have seen must have been
terrible. For, though no one knew it as a certainty, yet in her darkness
and muteness since the coming of her gift of hearing she had been
learning speech and the different voices of men. All that was spoken in
that crowd she understood, and never a word escaped her, and what others
saw she felt, only nearer and more terrible, because wrapped in the
darkness outside her eyes that were blind.

First there came a lull in the general clamour, and then a coarse,
jarring, stridulous voice rose in the air. Naomi knew whose voice it
was--it was the voice of old Abraham Pigman, the usurer.

“Brothers of Tetuan,” the old man cried, “what are we waiting for? For
the verdict of the judges? Who wants their verdict? There is only one
thing to do. Let us ask the Kaid to remove this man. The Kaid is a
humane master. If he has sometimes worked wrong by us, he has been
driven to do that which in his soul he abhors. Let us go to him and say:
‘Lord Basha, through five-and-twenty years this man of our people has
stood over us to oppress us, and your servants have suffered and been
silent. In that time we have seen the seed of Israel hunted from the
houses of their fathers where they have lived since their birth. We have
seen them buffeted and smitten, without a resting-place for the soles
of their feet, and perishing in hunger and thirst and nakedness and
the want of all things. Is this to your honour, or your glory, or your
profit?’”

The people broke into loud cries of approval, and when they were once
more silent, the thick voice went on: “And not the seed of Israel
only, but the sons of Islam also, has this man plunged in the depths of
misery. Under a Sultan who desires liberty and a Kaid who loves justice,
in a land that breathes freedom and a city that is favoured of God,
our brethren the Muslimeen sink with us in deep mire where there is no
standing. Every day brings to both its burden of fresh sorrow. At
this moment a plague is upon us. The country is bare; the town is
overflowing; every man stumbles over his fellow our lives hang in doubt;
in the morning we say ‘Would it were evening’; in the evening we say,
‘Would it were morning’; stretch out your hand and help us!”

Again the crowd burst into shouts of assent, and the stridulous voice
continued: “Let us say to him ‘Lord Basha, there is no way of help but
one. Pluck down this man that is set over us. He belongs to our own race
and nation; but give us a master of any other race and nation; any Moor,
any Arab, any Berber, any negro; only take back this man of our own
people, and your servants will bless you.’”

The old man’s voice was drowned in great shouts of “Ben Aboo!” “To Ben
Aboo!” “Why wait for the judges?” “To the Kasbah!” “The Kasbah!”

But a second voice came piercing through the boom and clash of those
waves of sound, and it was thin and shrill as the cry of a pea-hen.
Naomi knew this voice also--it was the voice of Judah ben Lolo,
the elder of the synagogue, who would have been sitting among the
three-and-twenty-judges but that he was a usurer also.

“Why go to the Kaid?” said the voice like a peahen. “Does the Basha
love this Israel ben Oliel? Has he of late given many signs of such
affection? Bethink you, brothers, and act wisely! Would not Ben Aboo
be glad to have done with this servant who has been so long his master?
Then why trouble him with your grievance? Act for yourselves, and the
Kaid will thank you! And well may this Israel ben Oliel praise the Lord
and worship Him, that He has not put it into the hearts of His people
to play the game of breaker of tyrants by the spilling of blood, as the
races around them, the Arabs and the Berbers, who are of a temper more
warm by nature, must long ago have done, and that not unjustly either,
or altogether to the displeasure of a Kaid who is good and humane and
merciful, and has never loved that his poor people should be oppressed.”

At this word, though it made pretence to commend the temperance of the
crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before. “Away with the man!”
 “Away with him!” rang out on every side in countless voices, husky and
clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep. Not a voice of them all called
for mercy or for patience.

While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air, a third voice
came through the tumult, and Naomi knew it, for it was the harsh voice
of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper of the poor-box.

“And does God,” said Reuben, “any more than Ben Aboo--blessings on his
life!--love that His people should be oppressed? How has He dealt with
this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly beside him, or has His
hand gone out against him? Since the day he came here, five-and-twenty
years ago, has God saved him or smitten him? Remember Ruth, his wife,
how she died young! Remember her father, our old Grand Rabbi, David ben
Ohana, how the hand of the Lord fell upon him on the night of the
day whereon his daughter was married! Remember this girl Naomi, this
offspring of sin, this accursed and afflicted one, still blind and
speechless!”

Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi’s ears like the neigh of a
breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown and was whispering.
“Come! Let us away!” But Naomi only clutched her hand and trembled.

The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again. “Do you say that
the Lord gave him riches? Behold him!--he swallowed them down, but has
he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that which he took by extortions
has he not been made to restore? Does God’s anger smoke against him?
Answer me, yes or no!”

Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of “Yes!” And
instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came a fourth voice,
a peevish, tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman. Naomi knew it--it
was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott, ninety-and-odd years of age, and
still deaf as a stone.

“Tut! What is all this talking about?” she snapped and grunted. “Reuben
Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don’t give them too much of
it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags. I am an old fool,
am I? Well, I’ve the more right to speak plain. What are we waiting here
for? The judges? Pooh! The sentence? Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben
Oliel, isn’t it? Then stone him! What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He’ll
laugh in your faces. A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A ransom? Who is
to ask for it? Only this mute, this Naomi, and you’ll have to work her
a miracle and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw! You are
children!”

The people laughed--it was the hard, grating, hollow laugh that sets the
teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it. Instantly the voices of the
crowd broke up into a discordant clangour, like to the counter-currents
of an angry sea. “She’s right,” said a shrill voice. “He deserves it,”
 snuffled a nasal one. “At least let us drive him out of the town,” said
a third gruff voice. “To his house!” cried a fourth voice, that pealed
over all. “To his house!” came then from countless hungry throats.

“Come, let us go,” whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand, and muttered
strange sounds to herself.

“To his house! Sack it! Drive the tyrant out!” the people howled in a
hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred, a man riding a
mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.

It was the messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy the
people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision of the
Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the sentence was death.

Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
for the procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
the sentence into effect. The procession was even then forming. It
was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate of the
Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked in front
of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks. They were
the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired when he set out on his
pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas, Mohammed of Mequinez.
By-and-by they were to betray him to Ben Aboo.

But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting and
turning like worms on an upturned turf. “Why sack his house?” cried
some. “Why drive him out?” cried others. “A poor revenge!” “Kill him!”
 “Kill him!”

At the sound of that word, never before spoken, though every ear had
waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness. But suddenly
in the midst of the wild vociferations there was a shrill cry of “He is
there!” and then there was a great silence.

It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane under the town
walls from the gate called the Bab Toot, where the road comes in from
Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali, the black boy, was riding one
mule and leading another.

He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
of Absalam, after he had fed them of his poverty, had blest him out
of their dry throats, saying, “May the God of Jacob bless you also,
brother!” and “May the child of your wife be blessed!” Ah! those
blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him as he walked.
He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang in his ears and were
like music in his melted soul. Once before he had heard such music.
It was in England. The organ swelled and the voices rose, and he was a
lonely boy, for his mother lay in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
strangely his heart was softened towards himself and-all the world And
Ruth! He could think of nothing without tenderness. And Naomi! Ah! the
sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be waiting for him at home,
for she was as one that had no life without his presence. What would
befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like the sweeping of
a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped as he walked with his
staff, and his head was held down, and his step was heavy.

Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people were
gathered together as wolves to devour him. On he came, seeing nothing
and hearing nothing and fearing nothing, and in the silence of the first
surprise at sight of him his footsteps were heard on the stones.

Naomi heard them.

Then it seemed to Naomi’s ears that a voice fell, as it were, out of the
air, crying, “God has given him into our hands!” After that all sounds
seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come to her muffled and stifled
by the distance.

But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
throat, the crowd encompassed Israel crying, “Kill him!” Israel stopped,
and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent in their
midst, and massive and square. His brave bearing did not break their
fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together. One struck at his
face, another tore at his long grey hair, and a third thrust him down on
to his knees.

No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight
girl that stood there--blind, dumb, powerless, frail, and so softly
beautiful--a waif on the margin of a tempestuous sea. Through the
thick barriers of Naomi’s senses everything was coming to her ugly and
terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him to pieces!

Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women. Like a flash
of light she had passed through the bellowing throng. She had thrust
herself between the people and her father, who was on the ground: she
was standing over him with both arms upraised, and at that instant God
loosed her tongue, for she was crying, “Mercy! Mercy!”

Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had spoken. No man
dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted against
him dropped back useless, and a wide circle formed around him. In the
midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered; she seemed to glow
like a spirit. And like a spirit she had driven back the people from
their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she, the blind, the frail,
the helpless.

Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again, and the
procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent. And, seeing how
it was that in the hour of his great need the gift of speech had come
upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him, and he tried to triumph over
his enemies and say, “You thought God’s arm was against me, but behold
how God has saved me out of your hands.”

But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
seemed to have dropped upon him.

At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, “Father!”

Then the cup of Israel’s heart was full. His throat choked him. So he
took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley of the people they
passed through the Mellah gate and went home to their house. Her eyes
were to the earth, and she wept as she walked; but his face was lifted
up, and his tears and his blood ran down his cheeks together.



CHAPTER XVI

NAOMI’S BLINDNESS


Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming of her
gift of hearing, had learned to know and understand the different
tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words for herself,
and to put out her own voice in the use of them, she was no more than
a child untaught in the ways of speech. She tripped and stammered and
broke down, and had to learn to speak as any helpless little one must
do, only quicker, because her need was greater, and better, because
she was a girl and not a babe. And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and
thinking shame of it, and being abashed by the patient waiting of her
father when she halted in her talk with him, and still more humbled by
Ali’s impetuous help when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back
again on silence.

Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies on the
Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond “Yes” and “No,” notwithstanding
Ali’s eager questions, and Fatimah’s tearful blessings, and Habeebah’s
breathless invocations, and also notwithstanding the hunger and thirst
of the heart of her father, who, remembering with many throbs of joy the
voice that he heard with his dreaming ears when he slept on the straw
bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan, would have given worlds of gold, if he
had possessed them still, to hear it constantly with his waking ears.

“Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,” Israel
would say.

His appeals were useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head, and
lift her father’s hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.

But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred. Israel was
returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions in the poor
quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder of the money
which old Reuben had paid him for the casket of his wife’s jewels. The
night was warm, the moon shone with steady lustre, and the stars were
almost obliterated as separate lights by a luminous silvery haze. It was
late, very late, and far and near the town was still.

With his innocent disguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
to cross it after sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home through
the sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front. The magic of
the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.

All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift of
speech had seemed to banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.
He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill
him. Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing
had not come to pass. Man’s extremity had indeed been God’s opportunity
and Ruth’s vision was all but realised.

Ah, Ruth! Ruth! It had escaped Israel’s notice until then that he had
been thinking of his dead wife the whole night through. When he put it
to himself so, he saw the reason of it at once. It was because there
was a sort of secret charm in the certainty that where she was she
must surely know that her dream was come true. There was also a kind
of bitter pathos in the regret that she was only an angel now and not a
woman; therefore she could not be with him to share his human joy.

As he walked through the Mellah, Israel thought of her again: how she
had sung by the cradle to her babe that could not hear. Sung? Yes, he
could almost fancy that he heard her singing yet. That voice so soft,
so clear even in its whispers--there had been nothing like it in all
the world. And her songs! Israel could also fancy that he heard her
favourite one. It was a song of love, a pure but passionate melody
wherein his own delicious happiness in the earlier days, before the
death of the old Grand Rabbi, had seemed to speak and sing.

Israel began to laugh at himself as he walked. To think that the warmth
and softness of the night, the sweet caressing night, the light and
beauty of the moon and the stillness and slumber of the town, could
betray an old fellow into forgotten dreams like these!

He had taken out of his pocket the big key of the clamped door to his
house, and was crossing the shadowed lane in front of it, when suddenly
he thought he heard music coating in the air above him. He stopped and
listened. Then he had no longer any doubt. It was music, it was singing;
he knew the song, and he knew the voice. The song was the song he had
been thinking of, and the voice was the voice of Ruth.

     O where is Love?
     Where, where is Love?
     Is it of heavenly birth?
     Is it a thing of earth?
     Where, where is Love?

Israel felt himself rooted to the spot, and he stood some time without
stirring. He looked around. All else was still. The night was as silent
as death. He listened attentively. The singing seemed to come from his
own house. Then he thought he must be dreaming still, and he took a step
forward. But he stopped again and covered both his ears. That was of no
avail, for when he removed his hands the voice was there as before.

A shiver ran over his limbs, yet he could not believe what his soul was
saying. The key dropped out of his hand and rang on the stone. When the
clangour was done the voice continued. Israel bethought him then that
his household must be asleep, and it flashed on his mind that if this
were a human voice the singing ought to awaken them. Just at that moment
the night guard went by and saluted him. “God bless your morning!” the
guard cried; and Israel answered, “Your morning be blessed!” That was
all. The guard seemed to have heard nothing. His footsteps were dying
away, but the voice went on.

Then a strange emotion filled Israel’s heart, and he reflected that even
if it were Ruth she could have come on no evil errand. That thought gave
him courage, and he pushed forward to the door. As he fumbled the key
into the lock he saw that a beggar was crouching by the doorway in the
shadow cast by the moonlight. The man was asleep. Israel could hear his
breathing, and smell his rags. Also he could hear the thud of his own
temples like the beating of a drum in his brain.

At length, as he was groping feebly through the crooked passage, a new
thought came to him. “Naomi,” he told himself in a whisper of awe. It
was she. By the full flood of the moonlight in the patio he saw her. She
was on the balcony. Her beautiful white-robed figure was half sitting on
the rail, half leaning against the pillar. The whole lustre of the moon
was upon her. A look of joy beamed on her face. She was singing her
mother’s song with her mother’s voice, and all the air, and the sky, and
the quiet white town seemed to listen:--

     Within my heart a voice
     Bids earth and heaven rejoice
     Sings--“Love, great Love
     O come and claim shine own,
     O come and take thy throne
     Reign ever and alone,
     Reign, glorious golden Love.”

Then Israel’s fear was turned to rapture. Why had he not thought of this
before? Yet how could he have thought of it? He had never once heard
Naomi’s voice save in the utterance of single words. But again, why had
he not remembered that before the tongues of children can speak words of
their own they sing the words of others?

The singing ended, and then Israel, struggling with his dry throat,
stepped a pace forward--his foot grated on the pavement--and he called
to the singer--

“Naomi!”

The girl bent forward, as if peering down into the darkness below, but
Israel could see that her fixed eyes were blind.

“My father!” she whispered.

“Where did you learn it?” said Israel.

“Fatimah, she taught me,” Naomi answered; and then she added quickly,
as if with great but childlike pride, saying what she did not mean, “Oh
yes, it was I! Was I not beautiful?”

After that night Naomi’s shyness of speech dropped away from her, and
what was left was only a sweet maidenly unconsciousness of all faults
and failings, with a soft and playful lisp that ran in and out among the
simple words that fell from her red lips like a young squirrel among the
fallen leaves of autumn. It would be a long task to tell how her lisping
tongue turned everything then to favour and to prettiness. On the coming
of the gift of hearing, the world had first spoken to her; and now, on
the coming of the gift of speech, she herself was first speaking to the
world. What did she tell it at that first sweet greeting? She told it
what she had been thinking of it in those mute days that were gone, when
she had neither hearing nor speech, but was in the land of silence as
well as in the land of night.

The fancies of the blind maid so long shut up within the beautiful
casket of her body were strange and touching ones. Israel took delight
in them at the beginning. He loved to probe the dark places of the mind
they came from, thinking God Himself must surely have illumined it
at some time with a light that no man knew, so startling were some of
Naomi’s replies, so tender and so beautiful.

One evening, not long after she had first spoken, he was sitting with
her on the roof of their house as the sun was going down over the
palpitating plains towards Arzila and Laraiche and the great sea beyond.
Twilight was gathering in the Feddan under the Mosque, and the last
light of day, which had parleyed longest with the snowy heights of the
Reef Mountains, was glowing only on the sky above them.

“Sweetheart,” said Israel, “what is the sun?”

“The sun is a fire in the sky,” Naomi answered; “my Father lights it
every morning.”

“Truly, little one, thy Father lights it,” said Israel; “thy Father
which is in heaven.”

“Sweetheart,” he said again, “what is darkness?”

“Oh, darkness is cold,” said Naomi promptly, and she seemed to shiver.

“Then the light must be warmth, little one?” said Israel.

“Yes, and noise,” she answered; and then she added quickly, “Light is
alive.”

Saying this, she crept closer to his side, and knelt there, and by her
old trick of love she took his hand in both of hers, and pressed it
against her cheek, and then, lifting her sweet face with its motionless
eyes she began to tell him in her broken words and pretty lisp what she
thought of night. In the night the world, and everything in it, was cold
and quiet. That was death. The angels of God came to the world in the
day. But God Himself came in the night, because He loved silence,
and because all the world was dead. Then He kissed things, and in the
morning all that God had kissed came to life again. If you were to get
up early you would feel God’s kiss on the flowers and on the grass. And
that was why the birds were singing then. God had kissed them in the
night, and they were glad.

One day Israel took Naomi to the mearrah of the Jews, the little
cemetery outside the town walls where he had buried Ruth. And there he
told her of her mother once more; that she was in the grave, but also
with God; that she was dead, but still alive; that Naomi must not expect
to find her in that place, but, nevertheless, that she would see her yet
again.

“Do you remember her, Naomi?” he said. “Do you remember her in the old
days, the old dark and silent days? Not Fatimah, and not Habeebah, but
some one who was nearer to you than either, and loved you better than
both; some one who had soft hands, and smooth cheeks, and long, silken,
wavy hair--do you remember, little one?”

“Y-es, I think--I _think_ I remember,” said Naomi.

“That was your mother, my darling.”

“My mother?”

“Ah, you don’t know what a mother is, sweetheart. How should you? And
how shall I tell you? Listen. She is the one who loves you first and
last and always. When you are a babe she suckles you and nourishes you
and fondles you, and watches for the first light of your smile, and
listens for the first accent of your tongue. When you are a young child
she plays with you, and sings to you, and tells you little stories, and
teaches you to speak. Your smile is more bright to her than sunshine,
and your childish lisp more sweet than music. If you are sick she is
beside you constantly, and when you are well she is behind you still.
Though you sin and fall and all men spurn you, yet she clings to you;
and if you do well and God prospers you, there is no joy like her joy.
Her love never changes, for it is a fount which the cold winds of the
world cannot freeze. . . . And if you are a little helpless girl--blind
and deaf and dumb maybe--then she loves you best of all. She cannot tell
you stories, and she cannot sing to you, because you cannot hear; she
cannot smile into your eyes, because you cannot see; she cannot talk to
you, because you cannot speak; but she can watch your quiet face, and
feel the touch of your little fingers and hear the sound of your merry
laughter.”

“My mother! my mother!” whispered Naomi to herself, as if in awe.

“Yes,” said Israel, “your mother was like that, Naomi, long ago, in the
days before your great gifts came to you. But she is gone, she has left
us, she could not stay; she is dead, and only from the blue mountains of
memory can she smile back upon us now.”

Naomi could not understand, but her fixed blue eyes filled with tears,
and she said abruptly, “People who die are deceitful. They want to go
out in the night to be with God. That is where they are when they go
away. They are wandering about the world when it is dead.”

The same night Naomi was missed out of the house, and for many hours no
search availed to find her. She was not in the Mellah, and therefore
she must have passed into the Moorish town before the gates closed at
sunset. Neither was she to be seen in the Feddan or at the Kasbah, or
among the Arabs who sat in the red glow of the fires that burnt before
their tents. At last Israel bethought him of the mearrah, and there
he found her. It was dark, and the lonesome place was silent. The
reflection of the lights of the town rose into the sky above it, and the
distant hum of voices came over the black town walls. And there, within
the straggling hedge of prickly pear, among the long white stones that
lay like sheep asleep among the grass, Naomi in her double darkness, the
darkness of the night and of her blindness was running to and fro, and
crying, “Mother! Mother!”

Fatimah took her the four miles to Marteel, that the breath of the sea
might bring colour to her cheeks, which had been whitened by the heat
and fumes of the town. The day was soft and beautiful, the water was
quiet, and only a gentle wind came creeping over it. But Naomi listened
to every sound with eager intentness--the light plash of the blue
wavelets that washed to her feet, the ripple of their crests when
the Levanter chased them and caught them, the dip of the oars of the
boatman, the rattle of the anchor-chains of ships in the bay, and the
fierce vociferations of the negroes who waded up to their waists to
unload the cargoes.

And when she came home, and took her old place at her father’s knees,
with his hand between hers pressed close against her cheek, she told him
another sweet and startling story. There was only one thing in the world
that did not die at night, and it was water. That was because water was
the way from heaven to earth. It went up into the mountains and over
them into the air until it was lost in the clouds. And God and His
angels came and went on the water between heaven and earth. That was why
it was always moving and never sleeping, and had no night and no day.
And the angels were always singing. That was why the waters were always
making a noise, and were never silent like the grass. Sometimes their
song was joyful, and sometimes it was sad, and sometimes the evil
spirits were struggling with the angels, and that was when the waters
were terrible. Every time the sea made a little noise on the shore, an
angel had stepped on to the earth. The angel was glad.

Israel had begun to listen to Naomi’s fancies with a doubting heart.
Where had they come from? Was it his duty to wipe out these beautiful
dream-stories of the maid born blind and newly come upon the joy of
hearing with his own sadder tales of what the world was and what life
was, and death and heaven? The question was soon decided for him.

Two days after Naomi had been taken to Marteel she was missed again.
Israel hurried away to the sea, and there he came upon her. Alone,
without help, she had found a boat on the beach and had pushed off on
to the water. It was a double-pronged boat, light as a nutshell, made
of ribs of rush, covered with camel-skin, and lined with bark. In this
frail craft she was afloat, and already far out in the bay not rowing,
but sitting quietly, and drifting away with the ebbing tide. The wind
was rising, and the line of the foreshore beyond the boat was white with
breakers. Israel put off after her and rescued her. The motionless eyes
began to fill when she heard his voice.

“My darling, my darling!” cried Israel; “where did you think you were
going?”

“To heaven,” she answered.

And truly she had all but gone there.

Israel had no choice left to him now. He must sadden the heart of this
creature of joy that he might keep her body safe from peril. Naomi was
no more than a little child, swayed by her impulses alone, but in more
danger from herself than any child before her, because deprived of two
of her senses until she had grown to be a maid, and no control could be
imposed upon her.

At length Israel nerved himself to his bitter task; and one evening
while Naomi sat with him on the roof while the sun was setting, and
there were noises in the streets below of the Jewish people shuffling
back into the Mellah, he told her that she was blind. The word made no
impression upon her mind at first. She had heard it before, and it had
passed her by like a sound that she did not know. She had been born
blind, and therefore could not realise what it was to see. To open a way
for the awful truth was difficult, and Israel’s heart smote him while
he persisted. Naomi laughed as he put his fingers over her eyes that
he might show her. She laughed again when he asked if she could see the
people whom she could only hear. And once more she laughed when the sun
had gone down, and the mooddin had come out on the Grand Mosque in the
Metamar, and he asked if she could see the old blind man in the minaret,
where he was crying, “God is great! God is great!”

“Can you see him, little one?” said Israel.

“See him?” said Naomi; “why yes, you dear old father, of course I can
see him. Listen,” she cried, ceasing her laughter, lifting one finger,
and holding her head aslant, “listen: God is great! God is great!
There--I saw him then.”

“That is only hearing him, Naomi--hearing him with your ears--with this
ear and with this. But can you see him, sweetheart?”

Did her father mean to ask her if she could _feel_ the mooddin in his
minaret far above them? Once more she laid her head aslant. There was a
pause, and then she cried impulsively--

“Oh, _I_ know. But, you foolish old father, how _can_ I? He is too far
away.”

Then she flung her arms about Israel’s neck and kissed him.

“There,” she cried, in a tone of one who settles differences, “I have
seen my _father_ anyway.”

It was hard to check her merriment, but Israel had to do it. He told
her, with many throbs in his throat, that she was not like other
maidens--not like her father, or Ali, or Fatimah, or Habeebah; that she
was a being afflicted of God; that there was something she had not got,
something she could not do, a world she did not know, and had never yet
so much as dreamt of. Darkness was more than cold and quiet, and light
was more than warmth and noise. The one was day--day ruled by the fiery
sun in the sky--and the other was night, lit by the pale moon and the
bright stars in heaven. And the face of man and the eyes of woman were
more than features to feel--they were spirit and soul, to watch and to
follow and to love without any hand being near them.

“There is a great world about you, little one,” he said, “which you have
never seen, though you can hear it and feel it and speak to it. Yes, it
is true, Naomi, it is true. You have never seen the mountains and the
dangerous gullies on their rocky sides. You have never seen the mighty
deep, and the storms that heave and swell in it. You have never seen man
or woman or child. Is that very strange, little one? Listen: your mother
died nine years ago, and you had never seen her. Your father is holding
your head in his hands at this moment, but you have never seen his face.
And if the dark curtains were to fall from your eyes, and you were to
see him now, you would not know him from another man, or from woman, or
from a tree. You are blind, Naomi, you are blind.”

Naomi listened intently. Her cheeks twitched, her fingers rested
nervously on her dress at her bosom, and her eyes grew large and solemn,
and then filled with tears. Israel’s throat swelled. To tell her of all
this, though he must needs do it for her safety, was like reproaching
her with her infirmity. But it was only the trouble in her father’s
voice that had found its way to the sealed chamber of Naomi’s mind.
The awful and crushing truth of her blindness came later to her
consciousness, probed in and thrust home by a frailer and lighter hand.

She had always loved little children, and since the coming of her
hearing she had loved them more than ever. Their lisping tongues, their
pretty broken speech, their simple words, their childish thoughts, all
fitted with her own needs, for she was nothing but a child herself,
though grown to be a lovely maid. And of all children those she loved
best were not the children of the Jews, nor yet the children of the
Moorish townsfolk, but the ragged, barefoot, black and olive-skinned
mites who came into Tetuan with the country Arabs and Berbers on market
mornings. They were simplest, their little tongues were liveliest, and
they were most full of joy and wonder. So she would gather them up in
twos and threes and fours, on Wednesdays and Sundays, from the mouths of
their tents on the Feddan, and carry them home by the hand.

And there, in the patio, Ali had hung a swing of hempen rope, suspended
from a bar thrown from parapet to parapet, and on this Naomi would sport
with her little ones. She would be swinging in the midst of them, with
one tiny black maiden on the seat beside her, and one little black man
with high stomach and shaven poll holding on to the rope behind her, and
another mighty Moor in a diminutive white jellab pushing at their feet
in front, and all laughing together, or the children singing as the
swing rose, and she herself listening with head aslant and all her fair
hair rip-rip-rippling down her back and over her neck, and her smiling
white face resting on her shoulder.

It was a beautiful scene of sunny happiness, but out of it came the
first great shadow of the blind girl’s life. For it chanced one day
that one of the children--a tiny creature with a slice of the woman in
her--brought a present for Naomi out of her mother’s market-basket.
It was a flower, but of a strange kind, that grew only in the distant
mountains where lay the little black one’s home. Naomi passed her
fingers over it, and she did not know it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s blue,” said the child.

“What is blue?” said Naomi

“Blue--don’t you know?--blue!” said the child.

“But what is blue?” Naomi asked again, holding the flower in her
restless fingers.

“Why, dear me! can’t you see?--blue--the flower, you know,” said the
child, in her artless way.

Ali was standing by at the time, and he thought to come to Naomi’s
relief. “Blue is a colour,” he said.

“A colour?” said Naomi.

“Yes, like--like the sea,” he added.

“The sea? Blue? How?” Naomi asked.

Ali tried again. “Like the sky,” he said simply.

Naomi’s face looked perplexed. “And what is the sky like?” she asked.

At that moment her beautiful face was turned towards Ali’s face, and
her great motionless blue orbs seemed to gaze into his eyes. The lad was
pressed hard, and he could not keep back the answer that leapt up to his
tongue. “Like,” he said--“like--”

“Well?”

“Like your own eyes, Naomi.”

By the old habit of her nervous fingers, she covered her eyes with her
hands, as if the sense of touch would teach her what her other senses
could not tell. But the solemn mystery had dawned on her mind at last:
that she was unlike others; that she was lacking something that every
one else possessed; that the little children who played with her knew
what she could never know; that she was infirm, afflicted, cut off; that
there was a strange and lovely and lightsome world lying round about
her, where every one else might sport and find delight, but that her
spirit could not enter it, because she was shut off from it by the great
hand of God.

From that time forward everything seemed to remind her of her
affliction, and she heard its baneful voice at all times. Even her
dreams, though they had no visions, were full of voices that told of
them. If a bird sang in the air above her, she lifted her sightless
eyes. If she walked in the town on market morning and heard the din of
traffic--the cries of the dealers, the “Balak!” of the camel-men,
the “Arrah!” of the muleteers, and the twanging ginbri of the
story-tellers--she sighed and dropped her head into her breast.
Listening to the wind, she asked if it had eyes or was sightless; and
hearing of the mountains that their snowy heads rose into the clouds,
she inquired if they were blind, and if they ever talked together in the
sky.

But at the awful revelation of her blindness she ceased to be a child,
and became a woman. In the week thereafter she had learned more of the
world than in all the years of her life before. She was no longer
a restless gleam of sunlight, a reckless spirit of joy, but a weak,
patient, blind maiden, conscious of her great infirmity, humbled by it,
and thinking shame of it.

One afternoon, deserting the swing in the patio, she went out with the
children into the fields. The day was hot, and they wandered far down
the banks and dry bed of the Marteel. And as they ran and raced, the
little black people plucked the wild flowers, and called to the cattle
and the sheep and the dogs, and whistled to the linnets that whistled to
their young.

Thus the hours went on unheeded. The afternoon passed into evening, the
evening into twilight, the twilight into early night. Then the air grew
empty like a vault, and a solemn quiet fell upon the children, and they
crept to Naomi’s side in fear, and took her hands and clung to her
gown. She turned back towards the town, and as they walked in the double
silence of their own hushed tongues and the songless and voiceless
world, the fingers of the little ones closed tightly upon her own.

Then the children cried in terror, “See!”

“What is it?” said Naomi.

The little ones could not tell her. It was only the noiseless summer
lightning, but the children had never seen it before. With broad white
flashes it lit up the land as far as from the bed of the river in the
valley to the white peaks of the mountains. At every flash the little
people shrieked in their fear, and there was no one there to comfort
them save Naomi only, and she was blind and could not see what they saw.
With helpless hands she held to their hands and hurried home, over the
darkening fields, through the palpitating sheets of dazzling light,
leading on, yet seeing nothing.

But Israel saw Naomi’s shame. The blindness which was a sense of
humiliation to her became a sense of burning wrong to him. He had asked
God to give her speech, and had promised to be satisfied. “Give her
speech, O Lord,” he had cried, “speech that shall lift her above the
creatures of the field, speech whereby alone she may ask and know.” But
what was speech without sight to her who had always been blind? What was
all the world to one who had never seen it? Only as Paradise is to Man,
who can but idly dream of its glories.

Israel took back his prayer. There were things to know that words could
never tell. Now was Naomi blind for the first time, being no longer
dumb. “Give her sight, O Lord,” he cried; “open her eyes that she may
see; let her look on Thy beautiful world and know it! Then shall her
life be safe, and her heart be happy, and her soul be Thine, and Thy
servant at last be satisfied!”



CHAPTER XVII

ISRAEL’S GREAT RESOLVE


It was six-and-twenty days since the night of the meeting on the Sok,
and no rain had yet fallen. The eggs of the locust might be hatched
at any time. Then the wingless creatures would rise on the face of the
earth like snow, and the poor lean stalks of wheat and barley that were
coming green out of the ground would wither before them. The country
people were in despair. They were all but stripped of their cattle; they
had no milk; and they came afoot to the market. Death seemed to look
them in the face. Neither in the mosques nor in the synagogues did they
offer petitions to God for rain. They had long ceased their prayers.
Only in the Feddan at the mouths of their tents did they lift up their
heavy eyes to the hot haze of the pitiless sky and mutter, “It is
written!”

Israel was busy with other matters. During these six-and-twenty days he
had been asking himself what it was right and needful that he should do.
He had concluded at length that it was his duty to give up the office he
held under the Kaid. No longer could he serve two masters. Too long had
he held to the one, thinking that by recompense and restitution, by fair
dealing and even-handed justice, he might atone to the other. Recompense
was a mockery of the sufferings which had led to death; restitution was
no longer possible--his own purse being empty--without robbery of the
treasury of his master; fair dealing and even justice were a vain hope
in Barbary, where every man who held office, from the heartless Sultan
in his hareem to the pert Mut’hasseb in the market, must be only as a
human torture-jellab, made and designed to squeeze the life-blood out of
the man beneath him.

To endure any longer the taunts and laughter of Ben Aboo was impossible,
and to resist the covetous importunities of his Spanish woman, Katrina,
was a waste of shame and spirit. Besides, and above all, Israel
remembered that God had given him grace in the sacrifices which he had
made already. Twice had God rewarded him, in the mercy He had shown to
Naomi, for putting by the pomp and circumstance of the world. Would
His great hand be idle now--now when he most needed its mighty and
miraculous power when Naomi, being conscious of her blindness, was
mourning and crying for sweet sight of the world and he himself was
about to put under his feet the last of his possessions that separated
him from other men--his office that he wrought for in the early days
with sweat of brow and blood, and held on to in the later days through
evil report and hatred, that he might conquer the fate that had first
beaten him down!

Israel was in the way of bribing God again, forgetting, in the heat
of his desire, the shame of his journey to Shawan. He made his
preparations, and they were few. His money was gone already, and so were
his dead wife’s jewels. He had determined that he would keep his house,
if only as a shelter to Naomi (for he owed something to her material
comfort as well as her spiritual welfare), but that its furniture and
belongings were more luxurious than their necessity would require or
altered state allow.

So he sold to a Jewish merchant in the Mellah the couches and great
chairs which he had bought out of England, as well as the carpets
from Rabat, the silken hangings from Fez, and the purple canopies from
Morocco city. When these were gone, and nothing remained but the simple
rugs and mattresses which are all that the house of a poor man needs in
that land where the skies are kind, he called his servants to him as he
sat in the patio--Ali as well as the two bondwomen--for he had decided
that he must part with them also, and they must go their ways.

“My good people,” he said, “you have been true and faithful servants to
me this many a year--you, Fatimah, and you also, Habeebah, since before
the days when my wife came to me--and you too, Ali, my lad, since you
grew to be big and helpful. Little I thought to part with you until my
good time should come; but my life in our poor Barbary is over already,
and to-morrow I shall be less than the least of all men in Tetuan. So
this is what I have concluded to do. You, Fatimah, and you, Habeebah,
being given to me as bondwomen by the Kaid in the old days when
my power, which now is little and of no moment, was great and
necessary--you belong to me. Well, I give you your liberty. Your papers
are in the name of Ben Aboo, and I have sealed them with his seal--that
is the last use but one that I shall put it to. Here they are, both of
them. Take them to the Kadi after prayers in the morning, and he will
ratify your title. Then you will be free women for ever after.”

The black women had more than once broken in upon Israel’s words with
exclamations of surprise and consternation. “Allah!” “Bismillah!” “Holy
Saints!” “By the beard of the Prophet!” And when at length he put the
deeds of emancipation into their hands they fell into loud fits of
hysterical weeping.

“As for you, Ali, my son,” Israel continued, “I cannot give you your
freedom, for you are a freeman born. You have been a son to me these
fourteen years. I have another task for you--a perilous task, a solemn
duty--and when it is done I shall see you no more. My brave boy, you
will go far, but I do not fear for you. When you are gone I shall think
of you; and if you should sometimes think of your old master who could
not keep you, we may not always be apart.”

The lad had listened to these words in blank bewilderment. That strange
disasters had of late befallen their household was an idea that had
forced itself upon his unwilling mind. But that Israel, the greatest,
noblest, mightiest man in the world--let the dogs of rasping Jews and
the scurvy hounds of Moors yelp and bark as they would--should fall to
be less than the least in Tetuan, and, having fallen that he should
send him away--him, Ali, his boy whom he had brought up, Naomi’s old
playfellow--Allah! Allah! in the name of the merciful God, what did his
master mean?

Ali’s big eyes began to fill, and great beads rolled down his black
cheeks. Then, recovering his speech he blurted out that he would not go.
He would follow his father and serve him until the end of his life. What
did he want with wages? Who asked for any? No going his ways for him! A
pretty thing, wasn’t it, that he should go off, and never see his father
again, no, nor Naomi--Naomi--that-that--but God would show! God would
show!

And, following Ali’s lead, Fatimah stepped up to Israel and offered her
paper back. “Take it,” she said; “I don’t want any liberty. I’ve got
liberty enough as I am. And here--here,” fumbling in her waistband and
bringing out a knitted purse; “I would have offered it before, only I
thought shame. My wages? Yes. You’ve paid us wages these nine years,
haven’t you; and what right had we to any, being slaves? You will not
take it, my lord? Well, then, my dear master, if I must go, if I must
leave you, take my papers and sell me to some one. I shall not care,
and you have a right to do it. Perhaps I’ll get another good master--who
knows?”

Her brows had been knitted, and she had tried to look stern and angry,
but suddenly her cheeks were a flood of tears.

“I’m a fool!” she cried. “I’ll never get a good master again; but if I
get a bad one, and he beats me, I’ll not mind, for I’ll think of
you, and my precious jewel of gold and silver, my pretty gazelle,
Naomi--Allah preserve her!--that you took my money, and I’m bearing it
for both of you, as we might say--working for you--night and day--night
and day--”

Israel could endure no more. He rose up and fled out of the patio
into his own room, to bury his swimming face. But his soul was big
and triumphant. Let the world call him by what names it would--tyrant,
traitor, outcast pariah--there were simple hearts that loved and
honoured him--ay, honoured him--and they were the hearts that knew him
best.

The perilous task reserved for Ali was to go to Shawan and to liberate
the followers of Absalam, who, less happy than their leader, whose
strong soul was at rest, were still in prison without abatement of
the miseries they lay under. He was to do this by power of a warrant
addressed to the Kaid of Shawan and drawn under the seal of the Kaid of
Tetuan. Israel had drawn it, and sealed it also, without the knowledge
or sanction of Ben Aboo; for, knowing what manner of man Ben Aboo was,
and knowing Katrina also, and the sway she held over him, and thinking
it useless to attempt to move either to mercy, he had determined to make
this last use of his office, at all risks and hazards.

Ben Aboo might never hear that the people were at large, for Ali was to
forbid them to return to Tetuan, and Shawan was sixty weary miles away.
And if he ever did hear, Israel himself would be there to bear the brunt
of his displeasure, but Ali the instrument of his design, must be
far away. For when the gates of the prison had been opened, and the
prisoners had gone free, Ali was neither to come back to Tetuan nor to
remain in Morocco, but with the money that Israel gave him out of the
last wreck of his fortune he was to make haste to Gibraltar by way
of Ceuta, and not to consider his life safe until he had set foot in
England.

“England!” cried Ali. “But they are all white men there.”

“White-hearted men, my lad,” said Israel; “and a Jewish man may find
rest for the sole of his foot among them.”

That same day the black boy bade farewell to Israel and to Naomi. He was
leaving them for ever, and he was broken-hearted. Israel was his father,
Naomi was his sister, and never again should he set his eyes on either.
But in the pride of his perilous mission he bore himself bravely.

“Well, good-night,” he said, taking Naomi’s hand, but not looking into
her blind face.

“Good-night,” she answered, and then, after a moment, she flung her arms
about his neck and kissed him. He laughed lightly, and turned to Israel.

“Good-night, father,” he said in a shrill voice.

“A safe journey to you, my son,” said Israel; “and may you do all my
errands.”

“God burn my great-grandfather if I do not!” said Ali stoutly.

But with that word of his country his brave bearing at length broke
down, and drawing Israel aside, that Naomi might not hear, he whispered,
sobbing and stammering, “When--when I am gone, don’t, don’t tell her
that I was black.”

Then in an instant he fled away.

“In peace!” cried Israel after him. “In peace! my brave boy, simple,
noble, loyal heart!”

Next morning Israel, leaving Naomi at home, set off for the Kasbah, that
he might carry out his great resolve to give up the office he held under
the Kaid. And as he passed through the streets his head was held up, and
he walked proudly. A great burden had fallen from him, and his spirit
was light. The people bent their heads before him as he passed, and
scowled at him when he was gone by. The beggars lying at the gate of the
Mosque spat over their fingers behind his back, and muttered “Bismillah!
In the name of God!” A negro farmer in the Feddan, who was bent double
over a hoof as he was shoeing a bony and scabby mule, lifted his ugly
face, bathed in sweat, and grinned at Israel as he went along. A
group of Reefians, dirty and lean and hollow-eyed, feeding their
gaunt donkeys, and glancing anxiously at the sky over the heads of the
mountains, snarled like dogs as he strode through their midst. The sky
was overcast, and the heads of the mountains were capped with mist.
“Balak!” sounded in Israel’s ears from every side. “Arrah!” came
constantly at his heels. A sweet-seller with his wooden tray swung in
front of him, crying, “Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Edrees, sweets,
all sweets,” changed the name of the patron saint of candies, and cried,
“Sweets, all sweets, O my lord Israel, sweets, all sweets!” The girl
selling clay peered up impudently into Israel’s eyes, and the oven-boy,
answering the loud knocking of the bodiless female arms thrust out at
doors standing ajar, made his wordless call articulate with a mocking
echo of Israel’s name.

What matter? Israel could not be wroth with the poor people.
Six-and-twenty years he had gone in and out among them as a slave. This
morning he was a free man, and to-morrow he would be one of themselves.

When he reached the Kasbah, there was something in the air about it that
brought back recollections of the day--now nearly four years past--of
the children’s gathering at Katrina’s festival. The lusty-lunged Arabs
squatting at the gates among soldiers in white selhams and peaked
shasheeahs the women in blankets standing in the outer court, the dark
passages smelling of damp, the gusts of heavy odour coming from the
inner chambers, and the great patio with the fountain and fig-trees--the
same voluptuous air was over everything. And as on that day so on this,
in the alcove under the horseshoe arch sat Ben Aboo and his Spanish
wife.

Time had dealt with them after their kind, and the swarthy face of the
Kaid was grosser, the short curls under his turban were more grey and
his hazel eyes were now streaked and bleared, but otherwise he was the
same man as before, and Katrina also, save for the loss of some teeth
of the upper row, was the same woman. And if the children had risen up
before Israel’s eyes as he stood on the threshold of the patio, he could
not have drawn his breath with more surprise than at the sight of the
man who stood that morning in their place.

It was Mohammed of Mequinez. He had come to ask for the release of
the followers of Absalam from their prison at Shawan. In defiance
of courtesy his slippers were on his feet. He was clad in a piece of
untanned camel-skin, which reached to his knees and was belted about his
waist. His head, which was bare to the sun and drooped by nature like a
flower, was held proudly up, and his wild eyes were flashing. He was not
supplicating for the deliverance of the people, but demanding it, and
taxing Ben Aboo as a tyrant to his throat.

“Give me them up, Ben Aboo,” he was saying as Israel came to the
threshold, “or, if they die in their prison, one thing I promise you.”

“And pray what is that?” said Ben Aboo.

“That there will be a bloody inquiry after their murderer.”

Ben Aboo’s brows were knitted, but he only glanced at Katrina, and made
pretence to laugh, and then said, “And pray, my lord, who shall the
murderer be?”

Then Mohammed of Mequinez stretched out his hand and answered,
“Yourself.”

At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in
his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.

Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed. He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was
master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of
this man whom the people called a prophet. And partly out of this fear,
and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed’s courageous behaviour
in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than
to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised
him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.

But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation
against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had
openly denounced her marriage.

“Wait, Sidi,” she said. “Is not this the fellow that has gone up and
down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the
law of Mohammed?”

At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he
made pretence to laugh again, and said, “Allah! so it is! Mohammed the
Third, eh? Son of Mequinez, God will repay you! Thanks! Thanks! You
could never think how long I’ve waited that I might look face to face
upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid.”

He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but
Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant. “Wait no
longer, O Ben Aboo,” he cried, “but look upon him now, and know that
what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and
die!”

Then Ben Aboo’s passion mastered him. He rose to his feet in his anger,
and cried, “Prophet, you have destroyed yourself. Listen to me! The
turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish
of hunger and rot of their sores. By the beard of my father, I swear
it!”

Mohammed did not flinch. Throwing back his head, he answered, “If I am
a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy. Before that which you say shall
come to pass, both you and your father’s house will be destroyed. Never
yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it
like a dog.”

Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of
barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, “Take him! He will
escape!”

But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and
Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.

“In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt
you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought
on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you. And
within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest,
your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing
and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with
you, for all else had forsaken you--all save one, and that was your
enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you
with his heart, because you were fallen and dead.”

Then, in the creeping of his terror, Ben Aboo rose up again and reeled
backward and his eyes were fixed steadfastly downward at his feet where
the eyes of Mohammed had rested. It was almost as if he saw the awful
thing of which Mohammed had spoken, so strong was the power of the
vision upon him.

But recovering himself quickly, he cried, “Away! In the name of God,
away!”

“I will go,” said Mohammed; “and beware what you do while I am gone.”

“Do you threaten me?” cried Ben Aboo. “Will you go to the Sultan? Will
you appeal to Abd er-Rahman?”

“No, Ben Aboo; but to God.”

So saying, Mohammed of Mequinez strode out of the place, for no man
hindered him. Then Ben Aboo sank back on to his seat as one that was
speechless, and nothing had the crimson on his body availed him, or the
silver on his breast, against that simple man in camel-skin, who owned
nothing and asked nothing, and feared neither Kaid nor King.

When Ben Aboo had regained himself, he saw Israel standing at the
doorway, and he beckoned to him with the downward motion, which is the
Moorish manner. And rising on his quaking limbs he took him aside and
said, “I know this fellow. Ya Allah! Allah! For all his vaunts and
visions he has gone to Abd er-Rahman. God will show! God will show! I
dare not take him! Abd er-Rahman uses him to spy and pry on his Bashas!
Camel-skin coat? Allah! a fine disguise! Bismillah! Bismillah!”

Then, looking back at the place where Mohammed in the vision saw his
body lie outstretched, he dropped his voice to a whisper, and said,
“Listen! You have my seal?”

Israel without a word, put his hand into the pocket of his waistband,
and drew out the seal of Ben Aboo.

“Right! Now hear me, in the name of the merciful God. Do not liberate
these infidel dogs at Shawan and do not give them so much as bread to
eat or water to drink, but let such as own them feed them. And if ever
the thing of which that fellow has spoken should come to pass--do you
hear?--in the hour wherein it befalls--Allah preserve me!--in that hour
draw a warrant on the Kaid of Shawan and seal it with my seal--are you
listening?--a warrant to put every man, woman, and child to the sword.
Ya Allah! Allah! We will deal with these spies of Abd er-Rahman!
So shall there be mourning at my burial--Holy Saints! Holy
Saints!--mourning, I say, among them that look for joy at my death.”

Thus in a quaking voice, sometimes whispering, and again breaking into
loud exclamations, Ben Aboo in his terror poured his broken words into
Israel’s ear.

Israel made no answer. His eyes had become dim--he scarcely saw the
walls of the place wherein they stood. His ears had become dense--he
scarcely heard the voice of Ben Aboo, though the Kaid’s hot breath was
beating upon his cheek. But through the haze he saw the shadow of one
figure tramping furiously to and fro, and through the thick air the
voice of another figure came muffled and harsh. For Katrina, having
chased away with smiles the evil looks of Ben Aboo, had turned to Israel
and was saying--

“What is this I hear of your beautiful daughter--this Naomi of
yours--that she has recovered her speech and hearing! When did that
happen, pray? No answer? Ah, I see, you are tired of the deception. You
kept it up well between you. But is she still blind? So? Dear me! Blind,
poor child. Think of it!”

Israel neither answered nor looked up, but stood motionless on the
same place, holding the seal in his hand. And Ben Aboo, in his restless
tramping up and down, came to him again, and said, “Why are you a Jew,
Israel ben Oliel? The dogs of your people hate you. Witness to the
Prophet! Resign yourself! Turn Muslim, man--what’s to hinder you?”

Still Israel made no reply. But Ben Aboo continued: “Listen! The people
about me are in the pay of the Sultan, and after all you are the best
servant I have ever had. Say the Kelmah, and I’ll make you my Khaleefa.
Do you hear?--my Khaleefa, with power equal to my own. Man, why don’t
you speak? Are you grown stupid of late as well as weak and womanish?”



CHAPTER XVIII

THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER


“Basha,” said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced
calmness--“Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this
hand of mine shall never seal that warrant.”

“Tut, man!” whispered Ben Aboo. “Do your new measles break out
everywhere? Am I not Kaid? Can I not make you my Khaleefa?”

Israel’s face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his
great resolve.

“Basha,” he said again calmly and quietly, “if you were Sultan and could
make me your Vizier, I would not do it.”

“Why?” cried Ben Aboo; “why? why?”

“Because,” said Israel, “I am here to deliver up your seal to you.”

“You? Grace of God!” cried Ben Aboo.

“I am here,” continued Israel, as calmly as before, “to resign my
office.”

“Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?” cried Ben Aboo. “Man, man,
are you mad?”

“No, Basha, not to-day,” said Israel quietly. “I must have been that
when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago.”

Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his
anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel
with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and
terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers
under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and
said, “There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let
me think!”

Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown
white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct
of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, “What
does it mean? What does it mean?”

In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. “Wait!” he
cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people
about him. “Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?
The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That’s it! I
knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought
him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread
should spy and pry on me?”

Satisfied with this explanation of Israel’s conduct, Ben Aboo waited for
no further assurance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and
protests. “O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.
Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves,
his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib
es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want
to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings
after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O
Compassionate! They’ll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of
my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I’m an old
soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I’ll
stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?
It’s because I’m his brother--that’s it, that’s it! But I’ve never risen
against him. Never, never! I’ve paid him all! All! I tell you I’ve paid
everything. I’ve got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you
know it.”

Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded
and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary
and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up
at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if
anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for
ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful
spectacle of the Kaid’s abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base
disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.

But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as
slowly and calmly as at first, “Basha, have no fear; I have not sold
myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see
the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing
of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for
myself alone.”

Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the
other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made
what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he
had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel’s
steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn
of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of
braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a
humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had
truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again,
and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once
more, without disguise and without shame.

“And pray, sir,” said he, with a ghastly smile, “what riches have you
gathered that you are at last content to hoard no more?”

“None,” said Israel shortly.

Ben Aboo laughed lustily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with
Katrina.

“And pray, again,” he said, with a curl of the lip, “without office and
without riches how may you hope to live?”

“As a poor man among poor men,” said Israel, “serving God and trusting
to His mercy.”

Again Ben Aboo laughed hoarsely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel
stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.

“Serving God is hard bread,” said Ben Aboo.

“Serving the devil is crust!” said Israel.

At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed
it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.

“Allah! What do you mean?” he cried. “Who are you that you dare wag your
insolent tongue at me?”

“I am your scapegoat, Basha,” said Israel, with an awful calm--“your
scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.
Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them
by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That’s what I am, Basha, and
have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets
among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are
up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and
the mistaken love of all men.”

While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the
opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy
cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose
and thick lips and massive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his
turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a shaggy mane over his ears.

But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face
to face with the tyrant, not a foot’s length between them, he spoke
again and said, “Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your
business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is
your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these
five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it.”

In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel’s hand as
he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of
the patio.

“Fool!” he cried. “So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most
merciful God, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A
prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compassionate!”

Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery
his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and
lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of God.

“Who said it was the Sultan?” he cried again. “He was a fool. Abd
er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That’s it!
That’s it!”

So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of
Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side
to side like a caged and angry beast.

“And if I am a tyrant,” he said in a thick voice, “who made me so? If
I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain
devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false
judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver
dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people
that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head
did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the
Prophet, I swear it!”

Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he
answered calmly and sadly, “God’s ways are not our ways, neither are
His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His
ministers. I thought God’s justice had failed, but it has overtaken
myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to
oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering.”

All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with
lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan
restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And
now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn
in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said
lightly, “Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its
teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?”

“About the time that you were, madam,” said Israel, lifting his heavy
eyes upon her.

At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. “Husband,” she
cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, “I hope
you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you
from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own
foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil’s dues were in him. Yet
you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are,
you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I
tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh,
trust him, he’s got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!
He’ll be master in Tetuan yet!”

Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes
laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry
cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers,
who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, “Arabs, Berbers,
Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may,
you’ll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!”

A hoarse murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile
came back into the face of Ben Aboo.

“You must be right,” he said, “you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!
This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and
I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him
place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could
find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his
enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and
none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own
hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them
I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya
Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of
his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!” he
cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, “if you must
give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come
to me and say, ‘Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I
have served you long and faithfully; let me rest’--why not? I say, why
not?”

Israel answered calmly, “Because it would have been a lie, Basha.”

“So it would,” cried Ben Aboo sharply, “so it would: you are right--it
would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and
say, ‘Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have
sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it.”

“Because it is true, Basha,” said Israel.

At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and
awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the
patio, he said, “There is another thing that is true. It is true that on
the other side of that wall there is a prison,” and, lifting his voice
to a shriek, he added, “you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.
One step more--”

But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and
the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling
throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have
had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn
countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his
passion, and a retort upon his words.

And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha’s story of his
ingratitude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of
rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin,
shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was
the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.
But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head
wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the
dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan’s
wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind’s eye
Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry,
gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And
good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death,
lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose
brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him
there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back
by his cubs.

But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should
he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither
read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the
Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should
he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man’s
house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?
He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage
had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then
courage! courage!

“Husband,” cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile
to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, “you must scour this vermin out of
Tetuan!”

“You are right,” he answered. “By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I
will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers.”

Then, wheeling about once more to where Israel stood, he said in a voice
of mockery, “Master, my lord, my Sultan, you came to resign your office?
But you shall do more than that. You shall resign your house as well,
and all that’s in it, and leave this town as a beggar.”

Israel stood unmoved. “As you will,” he said quietly.

“Where are the two women--the slaves?” asked Ben Aboo.

“At home,” said Israel.

“They are mine, and I take them back,” said Ben Aboo.

Israel’s face quivered, and he seemed to be about to protest, but he
only drew a longer breath, and said again, “As you will, Basha.”

Ben Aboo’s voice gathered vehemence at every fresh question. “Where
is your money?” he cried; “the money that you have made out of my
service--out of me--_my_ money--where is it?”

“Nowhere,” said Israel.

“It’s a lie--another lie!” cried Ben Aboo. “Oh yes, I’ve heard of your
charities, master. They were meant to buy over my people, were they?
Were they? Were they, I ask?”

“So you say, Basha,” said Israel.

“So I know!” cried Ben Aboo; “but all you had is not gone that way.
You’re a fool, but not fool enough for that! Give up your keys--the keys
of your house!”

Israel hesitated, and then said, “Let me return for a minute--it is all
I ask.”

At that the woman laughed hysterically. “Ah! he has something left after
all!” she cried.

Israel turned his slow eyes upon her, and said, “Yes, madam, I _have_
something left--after all.”

Paying no heed to the reply, Katrina cried to Ben Aboo again, saying,
“El Arby, make him give up the key of that house. He has treasure
there!”

“It is true, madam,” said Israel; “it is true that I have a treasure
there. My daughter--my little blind Naomi.”

“Is that all?” cried Katrina and Ben Aboo together.

“It is all,” said Israel, “but it is enough. Let me fetch her.”

“Don’t allow it!” cried Katrina.

Israel’s face betrayed feeling. He was struggling to suppress it. “Make
me homeless if you will,” he said, “turn me like a beggar out of your
town, but let me fetch my daughter.”

“She’ll not thank you,” cried Katrina.

“She loves me,” said Israel, “I am growing old, I am numbering the steps
of death. I need her joyous young life beside me in my declining age.
Then, she is helpless, she is blind, she is my scapegoat, Basha, as I am
yours, and no one save her father--”

“Ah! Ah! Ah!”

Israel had spoken warmly, and at the tender fibres of feeling that had
been forced out of him at last the woman was laughing derisively. “Trust
me,” she cried, “I know what daughters are. Girls like better things.
No, I’ll give her what will be more to her taste. She shall stay here
with me.”

Israel drew himself up to his full height and answered, “Madam, I would
rather see her dead at my feet.”

Then Ben Aboo broke in and said, “Don’t wag your tongue at your
mistress, sir.”

“_Your_ mistress, Basha,” said Israel; “not mine.”

At that word Katrina, with all her evil face aflame came sweeping down
upon Israel, and struck him with her fan on the forehead. He did not
flinch or speak. The blow had burst the skin, and a drop of blood
trickled over the temple on to the cheek. There was a short deep pause.

Then the hard tension of silence was broken by a faint cry. It came from
behind, from the doorway; it was the voice of a girl.

In the blank stupor of the moment, every eye being on the two that stood
in the midst, no one had observed until then that another had entered
the patio. It was Naomi. How long she had been there no one knew, and
how she had come unnoticed through the corridors out of the streets
scarce any one--even when time sufficed to arrange the scattered
thoughts of the Makhazni, the guard at the gate--could clearly tell. She
stood under the arch, with one hand at her breast, which heaved visibly
with emotion, and the other hand stretched out to touch the open
iron-clamped door, as if for help and guidance. Her head was held up,
her lips were apart, and her motionless blind eyes seemed to stare
wildly. She had heard the hot words. She had heard the sound of the blow
that followed them. Her father was smitten! Her father! Her father!
It was then that she uttered the cry. All eyes turned to her. Quaking,
reeling, almost falling, she came tottering down the patio. Soul and
sense seemed to be struggling together in her blind face. What did it
all mean? What was happening? Her fixed eyes stared as if they must
burst the bonds that bound them, and look and see, and know!

At that moment God wrought a mighty work, a wondrous change, such as He
has brought to pass but twice or thrice since men were born blind into
His world of light. In an instant, at a thought, by one spontaneous
flash, as if the spirit of the girl tore down the dark curtains which
had hung for seventeen years over the windows of her eyes, Naomi saw!

They all knew it at once. It seemed to them as if every feature of the
girl’s face had leapt into her eyes; as if the expression of her lips,
her brow, her nostrils, had sprung to them: as if her face, so fair
before, so full of quivering feeling, must have been nothing until then
but a blank. Nay, but they seemed to see her now for the first time.
This, only this, was she!

And to Naomi also, at that moment, it was almost as if she had been
newly born into life. She was meeting the world at last face to face,
eye to eye. Into her darkened chamber, that had never known the light,
everything had entered at a blow--the white glare of the sun, the
blue sky, the tiled patio, the faces of the Kaid and his wife and his
soldiers, and of the old man also, with the unshed tears hanging on the
fringe of his eyelid. She could not realise the marvel. She did not know
what vision was. She had not learned to see. Her trembling soul had gone
out from its dark chamber and met the mighty light in his mansion. “Oh!
oh!” she cried, and stood bewildered and helpless in the midst. The
picture of the world seemed to be falling upon her, and she covered her
eyes with her hands, that she might abolish it altogether.

Israel saw everything. “Naomi!” he cried in a choking voice, and
stretched out his hands to her. Then she uncovered her eyes, and looked,
and paused and hesitated.

“Naomi!” he cried again, and made a step towards her. She covered her
eyes once more that she might shut out the stranger they showed her, and
only listen to the voice that she knew so well. Then she staggered into
her father’s arms. And Israel’s heart was big, and he gathered her to
his breast, and, turning towards the woman, he said, “Madam, we are
in the hands of God. Look! See! He has sent His angel to protect His
servant.”

Meantime, Ben Aboo was quaking with fear. He too, saw the finger of God
in the wondrous thing which had come to pass. And, falling back on his
maudlin mood, he muttered prayers beneath his breath, as he had done
before when the human majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman, was the object
of his terror. “O Giver of good to all! What is this? Allah save us!
Bismillah! Is it Allah or the Jinoon? Merciful! Compassionate! Curses on
them both! Allah! Allah!”

The soldiers were affected by the fears of the Basha, and they huddled
together in a group. But Katrina fell to laughing.

“Brava!” she cried. “Brava! Oh! a brave imposture! What did I say long
ago? Blind? No more blind than you were! But a pretty pretence! Well
acted! Very well acted! Brava! Brava!”

Thus she laughed and mocked, and the Basha, hearing her, took shame of
his crawling fears, and made a poor show of joining her.

Israel heard them, and for a moment, seeing how they made sport of
Naomi, a fire was kindled in his anger that seemed to come up from the
lowest hell. But he fought back the passion that was mastering him, and
at the next instant the laughter had ceased, and Ben Aboo was saying--

“Guards, take both of them. Set the man on an ass, and let the girl walk
barefoot before him; and let a crier cry beside them, ‘So shall it be
done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who
is a play-actor and a cheat!’ Thus let them pass through the streets and
through the people until they are come to a gate of the town, and then
cast them forth from it like lepers and like dogs!”



CHAPTER XIX


THE RAINBOW SIGN


While this bad work had been going forward in the Kasbah a great
blessing had fallen on the town. The long-looked for, hoped for, prayed
for--the good and blessed rain--had come at last. In gentle drops like
dew it had at first been falling from the rack of dark cloud which had
gathered over the heads of the mountains, and now, after half an hour of
such moisture, the sky over the town was grey, and the rain was pouring
down like a flood.

Oh! the joy of it, the sweetness, the freshness, the beauty, the odour!
The air overhead, which had been dense with dust, was clearing and
whitening as if the water washed it. And the ground underfoot, which
had reeked of creeping and crawling things, was running like a wholesome
river, and bearing back to the lips a taste as of the sea.

And the people of the town, in their surprise and gladness at the
falling of the rain, had come out of their houses to meet it. The
streets and the marketplace were full of them. In childish joy they
wandered up and down in the drenching flood, without fear or thought
of harm, with laughing eyes and gleaming white teeth, holding out their
palms to the rain and drinking it. Hailing each other in the voices of
boys, jesting and shouting and singing, to and fro they went and came
without aim or direction. The Jews trooped out of the Mellah, chattering
like jays, and the Moors at the gate salaamed to them. Mule-drivers
cried “Balak” in tones that seemed to sing; gunsmiths and saddle-makers
sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs
stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their
dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square
capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long
guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and
sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were far
away.

Now, it was just when the town was alive with this strange scene that
the procession which had been ordered by Ben Aboo came out from
the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand and
gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah and crimson
selham. Behind him were four black police, and on either side of the
company were two criers of the street, each carrying a short staff
festooned with strings of copper coin, which he rattled in the air for a
bell. Between these came the victims of the Basha’s order--Naomi first,
barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all but the last garment that
hid her nakedness, her head held down, her face hidden, and her eyes
closed--and Israel afterwards, mounted on a lean and ragged ass. A
further guard of black police walked at the back of all. Thus they came
down the steep arcades into the market-square, where the greater body of
the townspeople had gathered together.

When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds from
every side of the Feddan, from every adjacent alley, every shop, tent,
and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst into loud
exclamations of surprise.

“Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!” cried the Moors.

“God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!” cried the people of the
Mellah.

“What is it? What has happened? What has befallen them?” they all asked
together.

“Balak!” cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him to
force a passage through the thronging multitude. “Attention! By your
leave! Away! Out of the way!”

And as they walked the criers chanted, “So shall it be done to every man
who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and
a cheat.”

When the people had recovered from their consternation they began to
look black into each other’s face, to mutter oaths between their teeth,
and to say in voices of no pity or rush, “He deserved it!” “Ya Allah,
but he’s well served!” “Holy Saints, we knew what it would come to!”
 “Look at him now!” “There he is at last!” “Brave end to all his great
doings!” “Curse him! Curse him!”

And over the muttered oaths and pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the procession moved along, came
still the cry of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an
enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”

Then the mood of the multitude changed. The people began to titter,
and after that to laugh openly. They wagged their heads at Israel; they
derided him; they made merry over his sorry plight. Where he was now
he seemed to be not so much a fallen tyrant as a silly sham and an
imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and ragged ass! Ya Allah! To
think that they had ever been afraid of him!

As the procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped in
a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door of
the Mosque, an old man, a beggar, hobbled through the crowd and struck
Israel with the back of his hand across the face. The woman had lost her
husband and the man his son by death sentences of Ben Aboo. Israel
had succoured both when he went about on his secret excursions after
nightfall in the disguise of a Moor.

“Balak! Balak!” cried the soldier in front, and still the chant of the
crier rang out over all other noises.

At every step the throng increased. The strong and lusty bore down the
weak in the struggle to get near to the procession. Blind beggars and
feeble cripples who could not see or stir shouted hideous oaths at
Israel from the back of the crowd.

As the procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies came
out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning to
the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel’s house; the other was a
company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki, Abraham Pigman, and
Judah ben Lolo. At the advent of the three usurers a new impulse seized
the people. They pretended to take the procession for a triumphal
progress--the departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan. The soldier
and police fell into the humour of the multitude. Salaams were made
to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground before the feet of Naomi.
Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd, and walked backward, and cried,
in his harsh, nasal croak--

“Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him! Make way!
make way!”

Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry of the
hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over the people’s heads a
huge green Spanish umbrella to a negro farrier that walked within; and
the black fellow, showing his white teeth in a wide grim, held it over
Israel’s head.

Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.

“God bless our Lord!”

“Saviour of his people!”

“Benefactor! King of men!”

And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.

All this time Israel had sat motionless on his ass, neither showing
humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided by the
Jews, spat upon and smitten by the people whose hungry mouths he had fed
with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him in her shame, and
at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred. And, thinking that
it was he who had brought her to this ignominy, he sometimes yearned to
reach her side and whisper in her ear, and say, “Forgive me, my child,
forgive me.” But again he conquered the desire, for he remembered
what God had that day done for her; and taking it for a sign of God’s
pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well, he raised his eyes on
her with tears of bitter joy, and thought, in the wild fever of his
soul, “She is sharing the triumph of my humiliation. She is walking
through the mocking and jeering crowd, but see! God Himself is walking
beside her!”

The procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot, the gate
going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow and the
concourse so great that for a moment the procession was brought to a
stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel and
said, so that all might hear, “Look at the crowds that have come out to
speed you, O saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all remember
this day!”

“So you shall!” cried Israel. “Until your days of death you shall all
remember it!”

He had not spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh at his
answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry, went to the hearts
of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd straightway, and
followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice of a brother. They
had been insulting calamity itself.

“Balak!” shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more, and the
procession moved again.

It was the hour of Israel’s last temptation. Not a glance in his face
disclosed passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed to be
jarring at his ear, “Look! Listen! Is it for people like these that you
have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice? You might have been
rich and great, and riding on their heads. They would have honoured you
then, but now they despise you. Fool! You have sold all and given to the
poor, and this is the end of it.” But in the throes and last gasp of his
agony, hearing his voice in his ear, and seeing Naomi going barefooted
on the stones before him, an angel seemed to come to him and whisper,
“Be strong. Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
servant of God, well done!”

He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
of faces black and white. “O pity of men!” he thought. “What devil is
tempting _them_?”

By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near
to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no
longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by
sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately
over the arch of the gate.

Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God’s hand in the
heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land
beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged--God
Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!

What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life
seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.

First the voice of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who
is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a
cheat.”

Then the voice of the soldier, “Balak! Balak!”

After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then
to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.

When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that
was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi
by the hand.



CHAPTER XX


LIFE’S NEW LANGUAGE

Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi were
settled in a little house that stood a day’s walk to the north of the
town, about midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak which
lies on the road to Tangier. From the hour wherein the gates had closed
behind them, everything had gone well with both. The country people who
lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered around and shown them
kindness. One old Arab woman, seeing Naomi’s shame, had come behind
without a word and cast a blanket over her head and shoulders. Then
a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers and drawn them on to
Naomi’s feet. The woman wore no blanket herself, and the feet of the
girl were bare. Their own people were haggard and hollow-eyed and
hungry, but the hearts of all were melted towards the great man in his
dark hour. “Allah had written it,” they muttered, but they were more
merciful than they thought their God.

Thus, amid silent pity and audible peace-blessings, with cheer of kind
words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered on
through the country from village to village, until in the evening, an
hour after sundown, they came upon the hut wherein they made their home.
It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent, such as the mountain
Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone, with its garden in a
court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears for his homestead, but an
oblong shed, roofed with rushes and palmetto leaves in the manner of an
Irish cabin. And, indeed, the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been,
who, escaping at Gibraltar from the ship that was taking him to Sidney,
had sailed in a Genoese trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the
land until he came to this lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the
better part of his countrymen, he had been a man of solitary habit and
gloomy temper, and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours,
and when he died his house had been left alone. That was the chance
whereby Israel and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and
unclaimed.

Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and
values, yet the little place was rich in some of the wealth that comes
only from the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses
grew at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had
first caught the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes of his
mind, where every perception was indistinct at that time, there seemed
to come back to him a vague and confused recollection of the abandoned
house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had surely seen
before. How this should be Israel could not tell, seeing that never
before to his knowledge had he passed on his way to Tangier so near to
Semsa. But when he questioned himself again, it came to him, like light
beaming into a dark room, that not in any waking hour at all had he seen
the little place before, but in a dream of the night when he slept on
the ground in the poor fondak of the Jews at Wazzan.

This, then, was the cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with
Naomi; this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to
hear and a tongue to speak; this was the vision of his dead wife, which
when he awoke on his journey had appeared to be vainly reflected in
his dream; and now it was realised, it was true, it had come to pass.
Israel’s heart was full, and being at that time ready to see the leading
of Heaven in everything, he saw it in this fact also; and thus, without
more ado than such inquiries as were necessary, he settled himself with
Naomi in the place they had chanced upon.

And there, through some months following, from the height of the summer
until the falling of winter, they lived together in peace and content,
lacking much, yet wanting nothing; short of many things that are thought
to make men’s condition happy, but grateful and thanking God.

Israel was poor, but not penniless. Out of the wreck of his fortune,
after he sold the best contents of his house, he had still some three
hundred dollars remaining in the pocket of his waistband when he was
cast out of the town. These he laid out in sheep and goats and oxen. He
hired land also of a tenant of the Basha, and sent wool and milk by the
hand of a neighbour to the market at Tetuan. The rains continued, the
eggs of the locust were destroyed, the grass came green out of the
ground, and Israel found bread for both of them. With such simple
husbandry, and in such a home, giving no thought to the morrow, he
passed with cheer and comfort from day to day.

And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the
loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of
his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always
present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his
hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed
the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far
away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town
lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.

“They are yonder,” he would think, “wrangling, contending, fighting,
praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from
them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet
odour of God’s proper air.”

But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former
life was the recollection of Naomi. God had given back all her gifts,
and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They
were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and
riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy
of Israel’s constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now
see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was
the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of God’s
pleasure and assurance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had
been lifted away.

More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his
delicious pleasure in Naomi’s new-found life. She was like a creature
born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of
strange sights.

But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had
happened to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on
the pupils of her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when
her father’s life seemed to be once more in danger, had--like a fall
or a blow--luxated the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all.
Throughout the day whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when
they were cast out of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through
the country until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes
steadfastly closed. The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate
lids, and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw
the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away; and when she
saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed
to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until
the falling of darkness did her fears subside and her spirits revive.
Throughout the day that followed she sat constantly in the gloom of the
blackest corner of their hut.

But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of
darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been
her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three
days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that
time forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then
sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and
delight in every little thing that lay about her--the grass, the weeds,
the poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and
the common stones that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar
to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an
angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.

For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise
everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in
the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on
the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him
as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still
in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and
put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition
and her lips utter his name. “My father,” she murmured, “my father.”

Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back
to the house from the grass bank in front of it, holding a flower in her
hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken,
lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers
that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened
its beautiful eye and laughed at her. “What is it?” she asked; “what is
it?”

“A daisy, my child,” Israel answered.

“A daisy!” she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and
quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and passed her
nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and
then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, “Oh, yes, so it
is; it is only a daisy.”

But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with
what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a
long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but
from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one
day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly
at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, “The sky! the sky!
Look! It has fallen on to the land.”

“That is the sea, my child,” said Israel.

“The sea!” she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and
then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed
out and her beautiful face looked aside, “So it is--yes, it is the sea.”

Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her
mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she
mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she
walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields
where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn
by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun,
until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still
the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized
upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless
sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the
chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white
wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the
air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening
clangour.

It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long
hour in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she
told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea,
and fought in the air and killed each other. “And see!” she cried; “look
at this, and this, and this!”

Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the
devilish warfare that she had witnessed and “This,” said he, lifting
one of them, “is a sea-bird’s feather; and this,” lifting another, “is
a sea-bird’s egg; and this,” lifting the third, “is a dead sea-bird
itself.”

Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes
and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.
“Ah yes,” she said meekly, looking into her father’s eye, with a smile,
“they are only that after all.” And then she said very quietly, as if
speaking to herself, “What a long time it is before you learn to see!”

It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of
Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took
shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she
had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came
back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the
sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like
fire, they swept across the clouds in multitudes, and went down behind
the world together, passing out of the earth through the gates of
heaven.

Israel listened to her and said, “That was the sunset my child. Every
morning the sun rises and every night it sets.”

Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet
errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and
Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, “After all, the eyes are
deceitful.” Vision was life’s new language, and she had yet to learn it.

But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world
to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of
it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself
alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off
with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth,
the sun was shining, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky
was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little
island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with
heather and long stalks of seeding grass. Through whispering beds of
rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming
fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger
at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on
the pebbles and great stones. It was a morning of God’s own making, and,
for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi
rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it
played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and
embrace it.

At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden
knows whom God has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she
knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of
the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where
they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun’s reflected disc
on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and
then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.

“Father,” she cried with alarm, “a face in the water! Look! look!”

“It is your own, my child,” said Israel. “Mine!” she cried.

“The reflection of your face,” said Israel; “the light and the water
make it.”

The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this
thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at
her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and
asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had
grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was
like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child
in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at
rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.

“How beautiful!” she cried, “how beautiful!”

She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water
was the wonder of her dancing eyes. “Oh! how very beautiful!” she cried
without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke
and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed
again with a heart of glee.

Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all
his sense of the dangers of Naomi’s artless joy in her own beauty, he
could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long
the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny
himself this choking rapture of her recovery. “Live on like a child
always, little one,” he thought; “be a child as long as you can, be a
child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that
I myself should be a child at all.”

The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly
some new fashion of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the
earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the
flowers. Also she would lie down in the grass and rest like a lamb, with
as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery
dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and
when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.
Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had
seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of
her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden
no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of
human sunlight gathering sunshine into her father’s house.

It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the
better part of the gifts of God should enjoy some of them at length
in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but
voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so
deep, so soft a voice as Naomi’s came to be, Israel thought he had never
heard before. Ruth’s voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete
with sparkling life, and passionate with the notes of a joyous heart.
All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was
still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her,
they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across
the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their
hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and
only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.

Fatimah’s ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely
from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her
favourite song was still her mother’s:--

     Oh, come and claim thine own,
     Oh, come and take thy throne,
     Reign ever and alone
     Reign glorious, golden Love.

Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper
fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was
almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a
maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think
of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was
even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she
were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.

Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like
the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi’s future
would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the
rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating
joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.
And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.

In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and
look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into
Naomi’s future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young
motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and
joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers
fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to
him!

But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could
not help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination
for him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given
his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was
his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty
as a father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another--some other
yet unseen--should come before him, and he should lose the daughter that
was now his own.

Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross
like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi’s sky, but at the next hour it
was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense
but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of
something which she believed to have happened to her in the night. She
had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew
no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with
tiles. Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing
white kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that
were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of
bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags
hung by yellow cords about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman
of a laughing cruel face; and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being
nowhere near--stood in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened
next she did not know, for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in
that interval they who had taken her away must have brought her back.
For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things of
their little home were about her, and her father’s eyes were looking
down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun was shining
outside, and the birds were singing, and the long grass was whispering
in the breeze, and it was the same as if she had been asleep during the
night and was just awakening in the morning.

“It was a dream, my child,” said Israel, thinking only with how vivid
a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the
picture of that day at the Kasbah.

“A dream!” she cried; “no, no! I _saw_ it!”

Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own
people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands
or the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them,
and sometimes it had been her mother’s arms that had been about her, and
sometimes her father’s lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes
Ali’s voice that had rung in her ears.

Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her
dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, “She is a child,
a child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child’s
weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into
the world as babes.”

Thus realising Naomi’s childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch
upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely
dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found
her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a passing
traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out
of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was
gazing full into the man’s gross face, answering his evil questions with
the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between
them; and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she
wept out her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown
her, Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new
petition to God. “O Lord, my God,” he cried, “when she was blind and
dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from
herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world, for no
man dared outrage her infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers
are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me
with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her,
for she is without knowledge of good and evil. Spare me a little
while longer, though I am stricken in years. For her sake spare me, Oh
Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her
sake spare me!”

God did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers
came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The
release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had
become known by the blind gratitude of one of them, who, hastening to
Israel’s house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before
it.



CHAPTER XXI

ISRAEL IN PRISON


Short as the time was--some three months and odd days--since the prison
at Shawan had been emptied by order of the warrant which Israel had
sealed without authority in the name of Ben Aboo, it was now occupied
by other prisoners. The remoteness of the town in the territory of
the Akhmas, and the wild fanaticism of the Shawanis, had made the
old fortress a favourite place of banishment to such Kaids of other
provinces as looked for heavier ransoms from the relatives of victims,
because the locality of their imprisonment was unknown or the danger
of approaching it was terrible. And thus it happened that some fifty or
more men and boys from near and far were already living in the dungeon
from which Israel and Ali together had set the other prisoners free.

This was the prison to which Israel was taken when he was torn from
Naomi and the simple home that he had made for himself near Semsa.
“Ya Allah! Let the dog eat the crust which he thought too hard for his
pups!” said Ben Aboo, as he sealed the warrant which consigned Israel to
the Kaid of Shawan.

Israel was taken to the prison afoot, and reached it on the morning of
the second day after his arrest. The sun was shining as he approached
the rude old block of masonry and entered the passage that led down
to the dungeon. In a little court at the door of the place the Kaid el
habs, the jailer, was sitting on a mattress, which served him for chair
by day and bed by night. He was amusing himself with a ginbri, playing
loud and low according as the tumult was great or little which came from
the other side of a barred and knotted doorway behind him, some four
feet high, and having a round peephole in the upper part of it. On the
wall above hung leather thongs, and a long Reefian flintlock stood in
the corner.

At Israel’s approach there were some facetious comments between the
jailer and the guard. Why the ginbri? Was he practising for the fires
of Jehinnum? Was he to fiddle for the Jinoon? Well, what was a man to do
while the dogs inside were snarling? Were the thongs for the correction
of persons lacking understanding? Why, yes; everybody knew their old
saying, “A hint to the wise, a blow to the fool.”

A bunch of great keys rattled, the low doorway was thrown open, Israel
stooped and went in, the door closed behind him, the footsteps of the
guard died away, and the twang of the ginbri began again.

The prison was dark and noisome, some sixty feet long by half as many
broad, supported by arches resting on rotten pillars, lighted only by
narrow clefts at either hand, exuding damp from its walls, dropping
moisture from its roof, its air full of vermin, and its floor reeking of
filth. And only less horrible than the prison itself was the condition
of the prisoners. Nearly all wore iron fetters on their legs, and some
were shackled to the pillars. At one side a little group of them--they
were Shereefs from Wazzan--were conversing eagerly and gesticulating
wildly; and at the other side a larger company--they were Jews from
Fez--were languidly twisting palmetto leaves into the shape of baskets.
Four Berbers at the farther end were playing cards, and two Arabs that
were chained to a column near the door squatted on the ground with a
battered old draughtboard between them. From both groups of players
came loud shouts and laughter and a running fire of expostulation and
of indignant and sarcastic comment. Down went the cards with triumphant
bangs, and the moves of the “dogs” were like lightning. First a mocking
voice: “_You_ call yourself a player! There!--there!--there!” Then a
meek, piping tone: “So--so--verily, you are my master. Well, let us
praise Allah for your wisdom.” But soon a wild burst of irony: “You are
like him who killed the dog and fell into the river. See! thus I teach
you to boast over your betters! I shave your beard! There!--there!--and
there!”

In the middle of the reeking floor, so placed that the thin shaft of
light from the clefts at the ends might fall on them--a barber-doctor
was bleeding a youth from a vein in the arm. “We’re all having it done,”
 he was saying. “It’s good for the internals. I did it to a shipload of
pilgrims once.” A wild-looking creature sat in a corner--he was a saint,
a madman, of the sect of the Darkaoa--rocking himself to and fro, and
crying “Allah! All-lah! All-l-lah! All-l-l-lah!” Near to this person
a haggard old man of the Grega sect was shaking and dancing at his
prayers. And not far from either a Mukaddam, a high-priest of the Aissa,
brotherhood--a juggler who had travelled through the country with a lion
by a halter--was singing a frantic mockery of a Christian hymn to a tune
that he had heard on the coast.

Such was the scene of Israel’s imprisonment, and such were the
companions that were to share it. There had been a moment’s pause in
the clamour of their babel as the door opened and Israel entered. The
prisoners knew him, and they were aghast. Every eye looked up and every
mouth was agape. Israel stood for a time with the closed door behind
him. He looked around, made a step forward, hesitated, seemed to peer
vainly through the darkness for bed or mattress, and then sat down
helplessly by a pillar on the ground.

A young negro in a coarse jellab went up to him and offered a bit of
bread. “Hungry, brother? No?” said the youth. “Cheer up, Sidi! No good
letting the donkey ride on your head!”

This person was the Irishman of the company--a happy, reckless,
facetious dog, who had lost little save his liberty and cared nothing
for his life, but laughed and cheated and joked and made doggerel songs
on every disaster that befell them. He made one song on himself--

     El Arby was a black man
     They called him “‘Larby Kosk:”
      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
     And stole slippers in the Mosque.

Israel was stunned. Since his arrest he had scarcely spoken. “Stay
here,” he had said to Naomi when the first outburst of her grief was
quelled; “never leave this place. Whatever they say, stay here. I will
come back.” After that he had been like a man who was dumb. Neither
insult nor tyranny had availed to force a word or a cry out of him.
He had walked on in silence doggedly, hardly once glancing up into the
faces of his guard, and never breaking his fast save with a draught of
water by the way.

At Shawan, as elsewhere in Barbary, the prisoners were supported by
their own relatives and friends, and on the day after Israel’s arrival a
number of women and children came to the prison with provisions. It was
a wild and gruesome scene that followed. First, the frantic search of
the prisoners for their wives and sons and daughters, and their wild
shouts as each one found his own. “Blessed be God! She’s here! here!”
 Then the maddening cries of the prisoners whose relatives had not come.
“My Ayesha! Where is she? Curses on her mother! Why isn’t she here?”
 After that the shrieks of despair from such as learned that their
breadwinners were dying off one by one. “Dead, you say?” “Dead!” “No,
no!” “Yes, yes!” “No, no, I say!” “I say yes! God forgive me! died
last week. But don’t you die too. Here take this bag of zummetta.” Then
inquiries after absent children. “Little Selam, where is he?” “Begging
in Tetuan.” “Poor boy! poor boy! And pretty M’barka, what of her?”
 “Alas! M’barka’s a public woman now in Hoolia’s house at Marrakesh. No,
don’t curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we
to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to
fetch you this journey, Jellali.” “I’ll not eat it now it’s brought. My
boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah! May the Kaid that keeps me
here roast alive in the fires of hell!” Then, apart in one quiet corner,
a young Moor of Tangier eating rice out of the lap of his beautiful
young wife. “You’ll not be long coming again, dearest?” he whispers. She
wipes her eyes and stammers, “No--that is--well--” “What’s amiss?” “Ali,
I must tell you--” “Well?” “Old Aaron Zaggoory says I must marry him, or
he’ll see that both of us starve.” “Allah! And you--_you_?” “Don’t look
at me like that, Ali; the hunger is on me, and whatever happens I--I can
love nobody else.” “Curses on Aaron Zaggoory! Curses on you! Curses on
everybody!”

No one had come with food for Israel, and seeing this ‘Larby the negro
swaggered up to him, singing a snatch and offering a round cake of
bread--

     Rusks are good and kiks are sweet
     And kesksoo is both meat and drink;
     It’s this for now, and that for then,
     But khalia still for married men.

“You’re like me, Sidi,” he said, “you want nothing,” and he made an
upward movement of his forefinger to indicate his trust in Providence.
That was the gay rascal’s way of saying that he stole from the bags of
his comrades while they slept.

“No? Fasting yet?” he said, and went off singing as he came--

     It will make your ladies love you;
     It will make them coo and kiss--

“What?” he shouted to some one across the prison “eating khalia in the
bird-cage? Bad, bad, bad!”

All this came to Israel’s mind through thick waves of
half-consciousness, but with his heart he heard nothing, or the very air
of the place must have poisoned him. He sat by the pillar at which he
had first placed himself, and hardly ever rose from it. With great slow
eyes he gazed at everything, but nothing did he see. Sometimes he had
the look of one who listens, but never did he hear. Thus in silence and
languor he passed from day to day, and from night to night, scarcely
sleeping, rarely eating, and seeming always to be waiting, waiting,
waiting.

Fresh prisoners came at short intervals, and then only was Israel’s
interest awakened. One question he asked of all. “Where from?” If they
answered from Fez, from Wazzan, from Mequinez, or from Marrakesh, Israel
turned aside and left them without more words. Then to his fellows they
might pour out their woes in loud wails and curses, but Israel would
hear no more.

Strangers from Europe travelling through the country were allowed to
look into the prison through the round peephole of the door kept by the
Kaid el habs, who played the ginbri. The Jews who made baskets took this
opportunity to offer their work for sale; and so that he might see the
visitors and speak with them Israel would snatch up something and hang
it out. Always his question was the same. “Where from last?” he would
say in English, or Spanish, or French, or Moorish. Sometimes it chanced
that the strangers knew him. But he showed no shame. Never did their
answers satisfy him. He would turn back to his pillar with a sigh.

Thus weeks went on, and Israel’s face grew worn and tired. His fellow
prisoners began to show him deference in their own rude way. When he
came among them at the first they had grinned and laughed a little.
To do that was always the impulse of the poor souls, so miserably
imprisoned, when a new comrade joined him. But the majesty and the
suffering in Israel’s face told on their hearts at last. He was a great
man fallen, he had nothing left to him; not even bread to eat or water
to drink. So they gathered about him and hit on a way to make him share
their food. Bringing their sacks to his pillar, they stacked them about
it, and asked him to serve out provisions to all, day by day, share and
share alike. He was honest, he was a master, no one would steal from
him, it was best, the stuff would last longest. It was a touching sight.

Still the old eagerness betrayed itself in Israel’s weary manner as
often as the door opened and fresh prisoners arrived. Once it happened
that before he uttered his usual question he saw that the newcomers
were from Tetuan, and then his restlessness was feverish. “When--were
you--have you been of late--” he stammered, and seemed unable to go
farther.

But the Tetawanis knew and understood him. “No,” said one in answer to
the unspoken question; “Nor I,” said another; “Nor I,” said a third,
“Nor I neither,” said a fourth, as Israel’s rapid eyes passed down the
line of them.

He turned away without a word more, sat down by the pillar and looked
vacantly before him while the new prisoners told their story. Ben Aboo
was a villain. The people of Tetuan had found him out. His wife was a
harlot whose heart was a deep pit. Between them they were demoralising
the entire bashalic. The town was worse than Sodom. Hardly a child in
the streets was safe, and no woman, whether wife or daughter, whom God
had made comely, dare show herself on the roofs. Their own women
had been carried off to the palace at the Kasbah. That was why they
themselves were there in prison.

This was about a month after the coming of Israel to Shawan. Then his
reason began to unsettle. It was pitiful to see that he was conscious of
the change that was befalling him. He wrestled with madness with all the
strength of a strong man. If it should fall upon him, where then would
be his hope and outlook? His day would be done, his night would be
closed in, he would be no more than a helpless log, rolling in an
ice-bound sea, and when the thaw came--if it ever came--he would be
only a broken, rudderless, sailless wreck. Sometimes he would swear at
nothing and fling out his arms wildly, and then with a look of shame
hang down his head and mutter, “No, no, Israel; no, no, no!”

Other prisoners arrived from Tetuan, and all told the same story. Israel
listened to them with a stupid look, seeming hardly to hear the tale
they told him. But one morning, as life began again for the day in that
slimy eddy of life’s ocean, every one became aware that an awful change
had come to pass. Israel’s face had been worn and tired before, but now
it looked very old and faded. His black hair had been sprinkled with
grey, and now it was white; and white also was his dark beard, which
had grown long and ragged. But his eye glistened, and his teeth were
aglitter in his open mouth. He was laughing at everything, yet not
wildly, not recklessly, not without meaning or intention, but with the
cheer of a happy and contented man.

Israel was mad, and his madness was a moving thing to look upon. He
thought he was back at home and a rich man still, as he had been in
earlier days, but a generous man also, as he was in later ones. With
liberal hand he was dispensing his charities.

“Take what you need; eat, drink, do not stint; there is more where this
has come from; it is not mine; God has lent it me for the good of all.”

With such words, graciously spoken, he served out the provisions
according to his habit, and only departed from his daily custom in
piling the measures higher, and in saluting the people by titles--Sid,
Sidi, Mulai, and the like--in degree as their clothes were poor and
ragged. It was a mad heart that spoke so, but also it was a big one.

From that time forward he looked upon the prisoners as his guests, and
when fresh prisoners came to the prison he always welcomed them as if
he were host there and they were friends who visited him. “Welcome!” he
would say; “you are very welcome. The place is your own. Take all. What
you don’t see, believe we have not got it. A thousand thousand welcomes
home!” It was grim and painful irony.

Israel’s comrades began to lose sense of their own suffering in
observing the depth of his, and they laid their heads together to
discover the cause of his madness. The most part of them concluded
that he was repining for the loss of his former state. And when one
day another prisoner came from Tetuan with further tales of the Basha’s
tyranny, and of the people’s shame at thought of how they had dealt by
Israel, the prisoners led the man back to where Israel was standing in
the accustomed act of dispensing bounty, that he might tell his story
into the rightful ears.

“They’re always crying for you,” said the Tetawani; “‘Israel ben Oliel!
Israel ben Oliel!’ that’s what you hear in the mosques and the streets
everywhere.’ Shame on us for casting him out, shame on us! He was our
father!’ Jews and Muslimeen, they’re all saying so.”

It was useless. The glad tidings could not find their way. That black
page of Israel’s life which told of the people’s ingratitude was sealed
in the book of memory. Israel laughed. What could his good friend mean?
Behold! was he not rich? Had he not troops of comrades and guests about
him?

The prisoners turned aside, baffled and done. At length one man--it was
no other than ‘Larby the wastrel--drew some of them apart and said, “You
are all wrong. It’s not his former state that he’s thinking of. _I_ know
what it is--who knows so well as I? Listen! you hear his laughter! Well,
he must weep, or he will be mad for ever. He must be _made_ to weep.
Yes, by Allah! and I must do it.”

That same night, when darkness fell over the dark place, and the
prisoners tied up their cotton headkerchiefs and lay down to sleep,
‘Larby sat beside Israel’s place with sighs and moans and other symptoms
of a dejected air.

“Sidi, master,” he faltered, “I had a little brother once, and he was
blind. Born blind, Sidi, my own mother’s son. But you wouldn’t think how
happy he was for all that? You see, Sidi he never missed anything, and
so his little face was like laughing water! By Allah! I loved that boy
better than all the world! Women? Why--well, never mind! He was six and
I was eighteen, and he used to ride on my back! Black curls all over,
Sidi, and big white eyes that looked at you for all they couldn’t see.
Well a bleeder came from Soos--curse his great-grandfather! Looked at
little Hosain--‘Scales!’ said he--burn his father! Bleed him and he’ll
see! So they bled him, and he did see. By Allah! yes, for a minute--half
a minute! ‘Oh, ‘Larby,’ he cried--I was holding him; then he--he--’
‘Larby,’ he cried faint, like a lamb that’s lost in the mountains--and
then--and then--‘Oh, oh, ‘Larby,’ he moaned Sidi, Sidi, I _paid_ that
bleeder--there and then--_this_ way! That’s why I’m here!”

It was a lie, but ‘Larby acted it so well that his voice broke in his
throat, and great drops fell from his eyes on to Israel’s hand.

The effect on Israel himself was strange and even startling. While
‘Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: “Where?
When? Naomi!” as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea.
And when ‘Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. “And you are
weeping for that?” he cried. “You think it much that the sweet child is
dead--God rest him! So it is to the like of you, but look at me!”

His voice betrayed a grim pride in his miseries. “Look at me! Am
I weeping? No; I would scorn to weep. But I have more cause a
thousandfold. Listen! Once I was rich; but what were riches without
children? Hard bread with no water for sop. I asked God for a child. He
gave me a daughter; but she was born blind and dumb and deaf. I asked
God to take my riches and give her hearing. He gave her hearing; but
what was hearing without speech? I asked God to take all I had and give
her speech. He gave her speech, but what was speech without sight?
I asked God to take my place from me and give her sight. He gave her
sight, and I was cast out of the town like a beggar. What matter? She
had all, and I was forgiven. But when I was happy, when I was content,
when she filled my heart with sunshine, God snatched me away from her.
And where is she now? Yonder, alone, friendless, a child new-born into
the world at the mercy of liars and libertines. And where am I? Here,
like a beast in a trap, uttering abortive groans, toothless, stupid,
powerless, mad. No, no, not mad, either! Tell me, boy, I am not mad!”

In the breaking waters of his madness he was struggling like a drowning
man. “Yet I do not weep,” he cried in a thick voice. “God has a right to
do as He will. He gave her to me for seventeen years. If she dies she’ll
be mine again soon. Only if she lives--only if she falls into evil
hands--Tell me, _have_ I been mad?”

He gave no time for an answer. “Naomi!” he cried, and the name broke
in his throat. “Where are you now? What has--who have--your father
is thinking of you--he is--No, I will not weep. You see I have a good
cause, but I tell you I will never weep. God has a right--Naomi!--Na--”

The name thickened to a sob as he repeated it, and then suddenly he rose
and cried in an awful voice, “Oh, I’m a fool! God has done nothing for
me. Why should I do anything for God? He has taken all I had. He has
taken my child. I have nothing more to give Him but my life. Let Him
take that too. Take it, I beseech Thee!” he cried--the vault of the
prison rang--“Take it, and set me free!”

But at the next moment he had fallen back to his place, and was sobbing
like a little child. The other prisoners had risen in their amazement,
and ‘Larby, who was shedding hot tears over his cold ones, was capering
down the floor, and singing, “El Arby was a black man.”

Then there was a rattling of keys, and suddenly a flood of light shot
into the dark place. The Kaid el habs was bringing a courier, who
carried an order for Israel’s release. Abd er-Rahman, the Sultan, was to
keep the feast of the Moolood at Tetuan, and Ben Aboo, to celebrate the
visit, had pardoned Israel.

It was coals of fire on Israel’s head. “God is good,” he muttered. “I
shall see her again. Yes, God has a right to do as He will. I shall see
her soon. God is wise beyond all wisdom. I must lose no time. Jailer
can I leave the town to-night? I wish to start on my journey.
To-night?--yes, to-night! Are the gates open? No? You will open them?
You are very good. Everybody is very good. God is good. God is mighty.”

Then half in shame, and partly as apology for his late intemperate
outburst, with a simpleness that was almost childish, he said, “A man’s
a fool when he loses his only child. I don’t mean by death. Time heals
that. But the living child--oh, it’s an unending pain! You would never
think how happy we were. Her pretty ways were all my joy. Yes, for her
voice was music, and her breath was like the dawn. Do you know, I was
very fond of the little one--I was quite miserable if I lost sight
of her for an hour. And then to be wrenched away! . . . . But I must
hasten back. The little one will be waiting. Yes, I know quite well
she’ll be looking out from the door in the sunshine when she awakes in
the morning. It’s always the way of these tender creatures, is it not?
So we must humour them. Yes, yes, that’s so that’s so.”

His fellow-prisoners stood around him each in his night-headkerchief
knotted under his chin--gaunt, hooded figures, in the shifting light of
the jailer’s lantern.

“Farewell, brothers!” he cried; and one by one they touched his hand and
brought it to their breasts.

“Farewell, master!” “Peace, Sidi!” “Farewell!” “Peace!” “Farewell!”

The light shot out; the door clasped back; there were footsteps
dying away outside; two loud bangs as of a closing gate, and then
silence--empty and ghostly.

In the darkness the hooded figures stood a moment listening, and then a
croaking, breaking, husky, merry voice began to sing--

     El Arby was a black man,
     They called him “‘Larby Kosk;”
      He loved the wives of the Kasbah,
     And stole slippers in the Mosque.



CHAPTER XXII

HOW NAOMI TURNED MUSLIMA


What had happened to Naomi during the two months and a half while Israel
lay at Shawan is this: After the first agony of their parting, in which
she was driven back by the soldiers when she attempted to follow them,
she sat down in a maze of pain, without any true perception of the evil
which had befallen her, but with her father’s warning voice and his last
words in her ear: “Stay here. Never leave this place. Whatever they say,
stay here. I will come back.”

When she awoke in the morning, after a short night of broken sleep and
fitful dreams, the voice and the words were with her still, and then she
knew for the first time what the meaning was, and what the penalty, of
this strange and dread asundering. She was alone, and, being alone, she
was helpless; she was no better than a child, without kindred to look
to her and without power to look to herself, with food and drink beside
her, but no skill to make and take them.

Thus her awakening sense was like that of a lamb whose mother has been
swallowed up in the night by the sand-drifts of the simoom. It was
not so much love as loss. What to do, where to look, which way to turn
first, she knew no longer, and could not think, for lack of the hand
that had been wont to guide her.

The neighbouring Moors heard of what had happened to Naomi, and some
of the women among them came to see her. They were poor farming people,
oppressed by cruel taxmasters; and the first things they saw were
the cattle and sheep, and the next thing was the simple girl with the
child-face, who knew nothing yet of the ways wherein a lonely woman must
fend for herself.

“You cannot live here alone, my daughter,” they said; “you would perish.
Then think of the danger--a child like you, with a face like a flower!
No, no, you must come to us. We will look to you like one of our own,
and protect you from evil men. And as for the creatures--”

“But he said I was never to leave this place,” said Naomi. “‘Stay here,’
he said; ‘whatever they say, stay here. I will come back.’”

The women protested that she would starve, be stolen, ruined, and
murdered. It was in vain. Naomi’s answer was always the same: “He told
me to stay here, and surely I must do so.”

Then one after another the poor folks went away in anger. “Tut!” they
thought, “what should we want with the Jew child? Allah! Was there ever
such a simpleton? The good creatures going to waste, too! And as for her
father, he’ll never come back--never. Trust the Basha for that!”

But when the humanity of the true souls had conquered their selfishness,
they came again one by one and vied with each other in many simple
offices--milking and churning, and baking and delving--in pity of the
sweet girl with the great eyes who had been left to live alone. And
Naomi, seeing her helplessness at last, put out all her powers to remedy
it, so that in a little while she was able to do for herself nearly
everything that her neighbours at first did for her. Then they would say
among themselves, “Allah! she’s not such a baby after all; and if
she wasn’t quite so beautiful, poor child, or if the world wasn’t so
wicked--but then, God is great! God is great!”

Not at first had Naomi understood them when they told her that her
father had been cast into prison, and every night when she left her lamp
alight by the little skin-covered window that was half-hidden under
the dropping eaves, and every morning when she opened her door to the
radiance of the sun she had whispered to herself and said, “He will come
back, Naomi; only wait, only wait; maybe it will be tonight, maybe it
will be to-day; you will see, you will see.”

But after the awful thought of what prison was had fully dawned upon
her as last, by help of what she saw and heard of other men who had been
there, her old content in her father’s command that she should never
leave that place was shaken and broken by a desire to go to him.

“Who’s to feed him, poor soul? He will be famishing. If the Kaid finds
him in bread, it will only be so much more added to his ransom. That
will come to the same thing in the end, or he’ll die in prison.”

Thus she had heard the gossips talk among themselves when they thought
she did not listen. And though it was little she understood of Kaids and
ransoms, she was quick to see the nature of her father’s peril, and at
length she concluded that, in spite of his injunction, go to him she
should and must. With that resolve, her mind, which had been the mind
of a child seemed to spring up instantly and become the mind of a woman,
and her heart, that had been timid, suddenly grew brave, for pity and
love were born in it. “He must be starving in prison,” she thought, “and
I will take him food.”

When her neighbours heard of her intention they lifted their hands in
consternation and horror. “God be gracious to my father!” they cried.
“Shawan? You? Alone? Child, you’ll be lost, lost--worse, a thousand
times worse! Shoof! you’re only a baby still.”

But their protests availed as little to keep Naomi at her home now as
their importunities had done before to induce her to leave it. “He must
be starving in prison,” she said, “and I will take him food.”

Her neighbours left her to her stubborn purpose.

“Allah!” they said, “who would have believed it, that the little
pink-and-white face had such a will of her own!”

Without more ado Naomi set herself to prepare for her journey. She
saved up thirty eggs, and baked as many of the round flat cakes of the
country; also she churned some butter in the simple way which the women
had taught her, and put the milk that was left in a goat’s-skin. In
three days she was ready, and then she packed her provisions in the leaf
panniers of a mule which one of the neighbours had lent to her, and got
up before them on the front of the burda, after the manner of the wives
whom she had seen going past to market.

When she was about to start her gossips came again, in pity of her wild
errand, to bid her farewell and to see the last of her. “Keep to the
track as far as Tetuan,” they said to her, “and then ask for the road
to Shawan.” One old creature threw a blanket over her head in such a
way that it might cover her face. “Faces like yours are not for the
daylight,” the old body whispered, and then Naomi set forward on her
journey. The women watched her while she mounted the hill that goes up
to the fondak, and then sinks out of sight beyond it. “Poor mad little
fool,” they whimpered; “that’s the end of her! She’ll never come back.
Too many men about for that. And now,” they said, facing each other with
looks of suspicion and envy, “what of the creatures?”

While the good souls were dividing her possessions among them, Naomi was
awakening to some vague sense of her difficulties and dangers. She had
thought it would be easy to ask her way, but now that she had need to do
so she was afraid to speak. The sight of a strange face alarmed her,
and she was terrified when she met a company of wandering Arabs changing
pasture, with the young women and children on camels, the old women
trudging on foot under loads of cans and kettles, the boys driving the
herds, and the men, armed with long flintlocks, riding their prancing
barbs. Her poor little mule came to a stand in the midst of this
cavalcade, and she was too bewildered to urge it on. Also her fear
which had first caused her to cover her face with the blanket that her
neighbour had given her, now made her forget to do so, and the men as
they passed her peered close into her eyes. Such glances made her blood
to tingle. They seared her very soul, and she began to know the meaning
of shame.

Nevertheless, she tried to keep up a brave heart and to push forward.
“He is starving in prison,” she told herself; “I must lose no time.” It
was a weary journey. Everything was new to her, and nearly everything
was terrible. She was even perplexed to see that however far she
travelled she came upon men and women and children. It was so strange
that all the world was peopled. Yet sometimes she wished there were more
people everywhere. That was when she was crossing a barren waste with no
house in sight and never a sign of human life on any side. But oftener
she wished that the people were not so many; and that was when the
children mocked at her mule, or the women jeered at her as if she must
needs be a base person because she was alone, or the men laughed and
leered into her uncovered face.

Before she had gone many miles her heart began to fail. Everything was
unlike what she expected. She had thought the world so good that she had
but to say to any that asked her of her errand, “My father is in prison,
they say that he is starving; I am taking him food,” and every one would
help her forward. Though she had never put it to herself so, yet she had
reckoned in this way in spite of the warnings of her neighbours. But no
one was helping her forward; few were looking on her with goodwill, and
fewer still with pity and cheer.

The jogging of the mule, a most bony and stiff-limbed beast, had
flattened the panniers that hung by its side, and made the round cakes
of bread to protrude from the open mouth of one of them. Seeing this,
a line of market-women going by, with bags of charcoal on their backs,
snatched a cake each as they passed and munched them and laughed. Naomi
tried to protest. “The bread is for my father,” she faltered; “he is
in prison; they say he--” But the expostulation that began thus timidly
broke down of itself, for the women laughed again out of their mouths
choked with the bread, and in another moment they were gone.

Naomi’s spirit was crushed, but she tried to keep up a brave front
still. To speak of her father again would be to shame him. The poor
little illusions of the sweetness and goodness of the world which, in
spite of vague recollections of Tetuan, she had struggled, since the
coming of her sight, to build up in her fresh young soul, were now
tumbling to pieces. After all, the world was very cruel. It was the same
as if an angel out of the clouds had fallen on to the earth and found
her feet mired with clay.

Six hours after she had set out from her home Naomi came to a
fondak which stood in those days outside the walls of Tetuan on the
south-western side. The darkness had closed in by this time, and she
must needs rest there for the night, but never until then had she
reflected that for such accommodation she would need money. Only a few
coppers were necessary, only twenty moozoonahs, that she might lie in
the shelter and safety of one of the pens that were built for the sleep
of human creatures, and that her mule might be tethered and fed on
the manure heap that constituted the square space within. At last she
bethought her of her eggs, and, though it went to her heart to use for
herself what was meant for her father, she parted with twelve of them,
and some cakes of the bread besides, that she might be allowed to pass
the gate, telling herself repeatedly, with big throbs of remorse between
her protestations, that unless she did so her father might never get
anything at all.

The fondak was a miserable place, full of farming people who were to go
on to market at Tetuan in the morning, of many animals of burden, and
of countless dogs. It was the eve of the month of Rabya el-ooal, and
between the twilight and the coming of night certain of the men watched
for the new moon, and when its thin bow appeared in the sky they
signalled its advent after their usual manner by firing their flintlocks
into the air, while their women, who were squatting around, kept up a
cooing chorus. Then came eating and drinking, and laughing and singing,
and playing the ginbri, and feats of juggling, as well as snarling and
quarrelling and fighting, and also peacemaking by means of a cudgel
wielded by the keeper of the fondak. With such exercises the night
passed into morning.

Naomi was sick. Her head ached. The smell of rotten fish, the stench of
the manure heap, the braying of the donkeys, the barking of the dogs,
the grunt of the camels, and the tumult of human voices made her
light-headed. She could neither eat nor sleep. Almost as soon as it
was light she was up and out and on her way. “I must lose no time,” she
thought, trying not to realise that the blue sky was spinning round her,
that noises were ringing in her head, and that her poor little heart,
which had been so stout only yesterday, was sinking very low.

“He must be starving,” she told herself again, and that helped her to
forget her own troubles and to struggle on. But oh, if the world were
only not so cruel, oh, if there were anyone to give her a word of cheer,
nay, a glance of pity! But nobody had looked at her except the women who
stole her bread and the men who shamed her with their wicked eyes.

That one day’s experience did more than all her life before it to fill
her with the bitter fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. Her illusions fell away from her, and her sweet childish faith was
broken down. She saw herself as she was: a simple girl, a child ignorant
of the ways of the world, going alone on a long journey unknown to her,
thinking to succour her father in prison, and carrying a handful of eggs
and a few poor cakes of bread. When at length the scales fell from the
eyes of her mind, and as she trudged along on her bony mule, afraid to
ask her way, she saw herself, with all her fine purposes shrivelled up,
do what she would to be brave, she could not help but cry. It was all
so vain, so foolish; she was such a weak little thing. Her father knew
this, and that was why he told her to stay where he left her. What if he
came home while she was absent! Should she go back?

She had almost resolved to return, struggle as she might to push
forward, when going close under the town walls, near to the very gate,
the Bab Toot whereat she had been cast out with her father remembering
this scene of their abasement with a new sense of its cruelty and shame
born of her own simple troubles, she lit upon a woman who was coming
out.

It was Habeebah. She was now the slave of Ben Aboo, and was just then
stealing away from the Kasbah in the early morning that she might go in
search of Naomi, whose whereabouts and condition she had lately learned.

The two might have passed unknown, for Habeebah was veiled, but that
Naomi had forgotten her blanket and was uncovered. In another moment the
poor frightened girl, with all her brave bearing gone, was weeping on
the black woman’s breast.

“Whither are you going?” said Habeebah.

“To my father,” Naomi began. “He is in prison; they say he is starving;
I was taking food to him, but I am lost, I don’t know my way; and
besides--”

“The very thing!” cried Habeebah.

Habeebah had her own little scheme. It was meant to win emancipation at
the hands of her master, and paradise for her soul when she died. Naomi,
who was a Jewess, was to turn Muslima. That was all. Then her troubles
would end, and wondrous fortune would descend upon her, and her father
who was in prison would be set free.

Now, religion was nothing to Naomi; she hardly understood what it meant.
The differences of faith were less than nothing, but her father was
everything, and so she clutched at Habeebah’s bold promises like a
drowning soul at the froth of a breaker.

“My father will be let out of prison? You are sure--quite sure?” she
asked.

“Quite sure,” answered Habeebah stoutly.

Naomi’s hopes of ever reaching her father were now faint, and her
poor little stock of eggs and bread looked like folly to her new-born
worldliness.

“Very well,” she said. “I will turn Muslima.”

A few minutes afterwards she was riding by Habeebah’s side into the
town, through the Bab Toot across the Feddan, and up to the courtyard
of the Kasbah, which had witnessed the beginning of her own and her
father’s degradation. Then, tethering the beast in the open stables
there, Habeebah took Naomi into her own little room and left her alone
for some minutes, while she hastened to Ben Aboo in secret with her
wondrous news.

“Lord Basha,” she said, “the beautiful Jewess Naomi, the daughter of
Israel ben Oliel, will turn Muslima.”

“Where is she?” said Ben Aboo.

“Sidi,” said Habeebah, “I have promised that you will liberate her
father.”

“Fetch her,” said Ben Aboo, “and it shall be done.”

But meanwhile Fatimah had gone to Habeebah’s room and found Naomi there,
and heard of the vain hope which had brought her.

“My sweet jewel of gold and silver,” the black woman cried, “you don’t
know what you are doing. Turn Muslima, and you will be parted from your
father for ever. He is a Jew, and will have no right to you any more.
You will never, never see him again. He will be lost to you--lost--I
say--lost!”

Habeebah, with two of the guard, came back to take Naomi to Ben Aboo.
The poor girl was bewildered. She had seen nothing but her father
in Fatimah’s protest, just as she had seen nothing but her father in
Habeebah’s promises. She did not know what to do, she was such a poor
weak little thing, and there was no strong hand to guide her.

They led her through dark passages to an open place which she thought
she had seen before. It was a great patio, paved and walled with tiles.
Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white
kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that were of
the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells,
a silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags, hung by yellow
cords, about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing
cruel face, and she herself, Naomi, stood in the midst, with every eye
upon her. Where had she seen all this before?

Ben Aboo had often bethought him of the beautiful girl since he
committed her father to prison. He cherished schemes concerning her
which he did not share with his wife Katrina. But he had hitherto been
withheld by two considerations: the first being that he was beset with
difficulties arising out of the demands of the Sultan for more money
than he could find, and the next that he foresaw the necessity that
might perchance arise of recalling Israel to his post. Out of these
grave bedevilments he had extricated himself at length by imposing
dues on certain tribes of Reefians, who had never yet acknowledged the
Sultan’s authority, and by calling on the Sultan’s army to enforce them.
The Sultan had come in answer to his summons, the Reefians had been
routed, their villages burnt, and that morning at daybreak he had
received a message saying that Abd er-Rahman intended to keep the feast
of the Moolood at Tetuan. So this capture of Naomi was the luckiest
chance that could have befallen him at such a moment. She should witness
to the Prophet; her father, the Jew, would thereby lose his rights
in her; and he himself, as her sole guardian, would present her as a
peace-offering to the Sultan on crossing the boundary of his bashalic.

Such was the new plan which Ben Aboo straightway conceived at hearing
the news of Habeebah, and in another moment he had propounded it to
Katrina. But when Naomi came into the patio, looking so soft, so timid,
so tired, yet so beautiful, so unlike his own painted beauties, with the
light of the dawn on her open face, with her clear eyes and the sweet
mouth of a child, his evil passions had all they could do not to go back
to his former scheme.

“So you wish to turn Muslima?” he said.

Naomi gave one dazed look around, and then cried in a voice of fear “No,
no, no!”

Ben Aboo glanced at Habeebah, and Habeebah fell upon Naomi with
protests and remonstrances. “She said so,” Habeebah cried. “‘I will turn
Muslima,’ she said. Yes, Sidi, she said so, I swear it!”

“Did you say so?” asked Ben Aboo.

“Yes,” said Naomi faintly.

“Then, by Allah, there can be no going back now,” said Ben Aboo; and he
told her what was the penalty of apostasy. It was death. She must choose
between them.

Naomi began to cry, and Ben Aboo to laugh at her and Habeebah to plead
with her. Still she saw one thing only. “But what of my father?” she
said.

“He shall be liberated,” said Ben Aboo.

“But shall I see him again? Shall I go back to him?” said Naomi.

“The girl is a simpleton!” said Katrina.

“She is only a child,” said Ben Aboo, and with one glance more at her
flower-like face, he committed her for three days to the apartments of
his women.

These apartments consisted of a garden overgrown by straggling weeds,
with a fountain of muddy water in the middle, an oblong room that was
stifling from many perfumes, and certain smaller chambers. The garden
was inhabited by a gazelle, whose great startled eyes looked out through
the long grass; and the oblong room by a number of women of varying
ages, among whom were a matronly Mooress, called Tarha, in a scarlet
head-dress, and with a string of great keys swung from shoulder to
waist; a Circassian, called Hoolia, in a gorgeous rida of red silk and
gold brocade; a Frenchwoman, called Josephine, with embroidered red
slippers and black stockings; and a Jewess, called Sol, with a band of
silk handkerchiefs tied round her forehead above her coal-black curls,
with her fingers pricked out with henna and her eyes darkened with kohl.

Such were Ben Aboo’s wives and concubines and captives, whom he had not
divorced according to his promise; and when Naomi came among them they
did their duty by their master faithfully. Being trapped themselves,
they tried to entrap Naomi also. They overwhelmed her with caresses,
they went into ecstasies over her beauty, and caused the future which
awaited her to shine before her eyes. She would have a noble husband,
magnificent dresses, a brilliant palace, and the world would be at her
feet. “And what’s the difference between Moosa and Mohammed?” said Sol;
“look at me!” “Tut!” said Josephine, “there’s nothing to choose between
them.” “For my part,” said Tarha, “I don’t see what it matters to us;
they say Paradise is for the men!” “And think of the jewels, and the
earrings as big as a bracelet,” said Hoolia, “instead of this,” and she
drew away between her thumb and first finger the blanket which Naomi’s
neighbour had given her.

It was all to no purpose. “But what of my father?” Naomi asked again and
again.

The women lost patience at her simplicity, gave up their solicitations,
ignored her, and busied themselves with their own affairs. “Tut!” they
said, “why should we want her to be made a wife of the Sultan? She would
only walk over us like dirt whenever she came to Tetuan.”

Then, sitting alone in their midst, listening to their talk, their
tales, their jests, and their laughter, the unseen mantle fell upon
Naomi at last, which made her a woman who had hitherto been a child.
In this hothouse of sickly odours these women lived together, having no
occupation but that of eating and drinking and sleeping, no education
but devising new means of pleasing the lust of their husband’s eye, no
delight than that of supplanting one another in his love, no passion but
jealousy, no diversion but sporting on the roofs, no end but death and
the Kabar.

Seeing the uselessness of the siege, Ben Aboo transferred Naomi to the
prison, and set Habeebah to guard her. The black woman was in terror at
the turn that events had taken. There was nothing to do now but to
go on, so she importuned Naomi with prayers. How could she be so
hard-hearted? Could she keep her father famishing in prison when one
word out of her lips would liberate him? Naomi had no answer but her
tears. She remembered the hareem, and cried.

Then Ben Aboo thought of a daring plan. He called the Grand Rabbi, and
commanded him to go to Naomi and convert her to Islam. The Rabbi
obeyed with trembling. After all, it was the same God that both peoples
worshipped, only the Moors called Him Allah and the Jews Jehovah. Naomi
knew little of either. It was not of God that she was thinking: it was
only of her father. She was too innocent to see the trick, but the Rabbi
failed. He kissed her, and went away wiping his eyes.

Rumour of Naomi’s plight had passed through the town, and one night a
number of Moors came secretly to a lane at the back of the Kasbah, where
a narrow window opened into her cell. They told her in whispers that
what she held as tragical was a very simple matter. “Turn Muslima,” they
pleaded, “and save yourself. You are too young to die. Resign yourself,
for God’s sake.” But no answer came back to them where they were
gathered in the darkness, save low sobs from inside the wall.

At last Ben Aboo made two announcements. The first, a public one, was
that Abd er-Rahman would reach Tetuan within two days, on the opening
of the feast of the Moolood, and the other, a private one, that if
Naomi had not said the Kelmah by first prayers the following morning she
should die and her father be cut off as the penalty of her apostasy.

That night the place under the narrow window in the dark lane was
occupied by a group of Jews. “Sister,” they whispered, “sister of our
people, listen. The Basha is a hard man. This day he has robbed us of
all we had that he may pay for the Sultan’s visit. Listen! We have heard
something. We want Israel ben Oliel back among us. He was our father,
he was our brother. Save his life for the sake of our children, for the
Basha has taken their bread. Save him, sister, we beg, we entreat, we
pray.”

Naomi broke down at last. Next morning at dawn, kneeling among men in
the Grand Mosque in the Metamar, she repeated the Word after the Iman:
“I testify that there is no God but God, and that our Lord Mohammed is
the messenger of God; I am truly resigned.”

Then she was taken back to the women’s apartments, and clad gorgeously.
Her child face was wet with tears. She was only a poor weak little
thing, she knew nothing of religion, she loved her father better than
God, and all the world was against her.



CHAPTER XXIII

ISRAEL’S RETURN FROM PRISON


Such was the method of Israel’s release. But, knowing nothing of the
price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy.
Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness
which hung over his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in
prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it.
He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate, and
jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was
merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed,
and his step was light. “Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I’ll
meet nothing worse than myself. Others _may_ who meet me? Ha, ha!
Perhaps so, perhaps so!” “No evil with you, brother?” “No evil, praise
be God.” “Well, peace be to you!” “On you be peace!” “May your morning
be blessed! Good-night!” “Good-night!” Then with a wave of the hand he
was gone into the darkness.

It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter,
was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a
silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on
the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be
seen were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white
in the gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel’s footsteps.
Israel walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the
Jebel Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was
cool and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the
joy of it to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the
night air as a young colt drinks in the wind.

And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel’s heart.
“I am going to be happy,” he told himself, “yes, very happy, very
happy.” He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter
than the rest, hung over the path before him. “It is leading me to
Naomi,” he thought. He knew that was folly, but he could not restrain
his mind from foolishness. And at least she had the same moon and stars
above her sleep, for she would be sleeping now. “I am coming,” he cried.
He fixed his eye on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never
resting, never pausing.

The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the
mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with
red. Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak
of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the
point of light. Israel’s breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer
step. “She will be waking soon,” he told himself.

The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing--the wheatear
in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the
rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth
below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like
vast spiders’ webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark,
kine to low, horses to cross each other’s necks, and over the freshness
of the air came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel
did not stop, but pushed on with new eagerness. “She will have risen
now,” he told himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door
and looking out for him in the sunlight.

“Poor little thing,” he thought, “how she misses me! But I am coming, I
am coming!”

The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw
it last. Then it had been like a dead man’s face; now it was like a face
that was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to
be quite young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the
freshness and vigour of spring. “I am going to see my child, and I shall
be happy yet,” thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no
longer.

He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer--“the house of the poor
one.” The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous
wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had
been sacked by the Sultan’s army, and its inhabitants had fled to the
mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined
houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could
recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish--cans,
kettles, water-bottles, a woman’s handkerchief, and a dainty red
slipper. On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little
stones built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the
ground in lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had
played there; the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits
still. “Poor souls!” thought Israel, but the troubles of others could
not really touch him. At that very moment his heart was joyful.

The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel
weary, and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was
from Shawan to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That
distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had
left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset
before he reached Naomi. It was now Thursday morning. He must lose
no time. “You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting,
waiting,” he told himself. “These sweet creatures are all so impatient;
yes, yes, so foolishly impatient. God bless them!”

He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They
answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their
trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred
dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he
had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his
twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel
hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their
story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi
he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty,
noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little
white island of the sea! His mother’s home! England! Yes, he would go
back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that?
Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful
gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name
aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on
her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be
so childish.

Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place.
It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were
picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the
voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning
under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel
that he had not eaten since the previous day. “I must have food,” he
thought, “though I do not feel hungry.” So he stopped, and the wandering
Arabs hailed him. “Markababikum!” they cried from where they sat within.

“You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!” Their land was the
world.

Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled
beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a
woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while
she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent’s two upright poles.
Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young
girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat’s-skin and
baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three
stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.

“On a long journey, brother?” said the man.

“No, oh no, no,” said Israel. “Only to Semsa, no farther.”

“Well, you must sleep here to-night,” said the Arab.

“Ah, I cannot do that,” said Israel.

“No?”

“You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor
child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of
a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient,
you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I
suppose we must humour them--that’s what I always say.”

“But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!” said the woman.

“Oh, nothing, that’s nothing, sister,” said Israel. “Well, peace!
Farewell all, farewell!”

Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the
darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense
black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness
ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on
every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort.
The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses.
He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke
out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from
somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no
choice but to stop. “After all, it is better,” he thought. “Strange, how
things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I
will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and
to ask and to hear.”

Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept
upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense
night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in
a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. “Yes, I must
sleep--sleep--to-morrow _she_ must sleep and I must watch by her--watch
by her as I used to do--used to do--how soft and beautiful--how
beautiful--sleeping--sleep--Ah!”

When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance,
the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the
borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river,
which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was
now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his
home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white
walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with
the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange
orchards.

But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled!
Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown
dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could
see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi’s
eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world
was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far
sweeter youth.

Naomi--Naomi--always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had
appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa.
But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two
months and a half--it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from
a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big,
slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently.
Nevertheless, he was her father still--her old, tired, dim-eyed father;
and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could
see and hear it all. First Naomi’s voice: “A bow in the sky--red, blue,
crimson--oh!” Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: “A
rainbow, child!” Ah! the dreams were beautiful!

He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi’s voice--the voice of his
poor dead Ruth--and to remember the song that she used to sing--the song
she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he
was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the
street--

     Within my heart a voice
     Bids earth and heaven rejoice.

He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he
sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was
making was Naomi’s voice and not his own.

Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the
Sultan’s gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping
sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation
that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his
face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true,
but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had
passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering,
infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but
after a pause one of them--Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name
was Solomon Laredo--stepped up and said, “Israel ben Oliel, our poor
Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God
has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of
you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!”

Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of
Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also
something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O’Donnel,
who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. “I think my
hearing must be failing me,” he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if
that did not greatly matter. “And to tell you the truth, though I pity
my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better
minister.”

“Never!” cried the Jews in many voices.

“Anyhow,” said Israel, “my life among you is ended. I set no store by
place and power. What does the English poet say, ‘In the great hand of
God I stand.’ Shakespeare--oh, a mighty creature--one who knew where
the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you’ve not lived in England. Do
you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You
remember her--Naomi--a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and
speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am
going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one
will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!”

Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was
on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation
stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.

And now, being come thus near to home, Israel’s impatience robbed him
of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began
to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His
absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since
he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain
shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.

At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the
little rush-covered house ought to be seen. “It’s yonder,” he cried, and
pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and
its strong rays were in his face. “She’s there, I see her!” he shouted.
A few minutes later he was near the door. “No, my eyes deceived me,”
 he said in a damp voice. “Or perhaps she has gone in--perhaps she’s
hiding--the sweet rogue!”

The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. “Naomi!” he
called in a voice like a caress. “Naomi!” His voice trembled now. “Come
to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!” He listened.
There was not a sound, not a movement. “Naomi!” The name was like a
gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly
and simply, “She’s not here.”

He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a
slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his
face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before--for himself,
for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him.
Death! Oh, oh!

With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the
floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He
flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi--it must be she!

It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had
been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too
suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. “Where is she laid?” he
said in a voice of awe.

Fatimah saw his error instantly. “Naomi is alive,” she said, and, seeing
how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, “and well, very
well.”

That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a
cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what
she had done.

“Where is she?” he cried. “Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she
not here? Lead me to her, lead me!”

Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. “Alas!” she said, weeping, “that
cannot be.”

Israel steadied himself and waited. “She cannot come to you, and neither
can you go to her.” said Fatimah. “But she is well, oh! very well.
Poor child, she is at the Kasbah--no, no, not the prison--oh no, she
is happy--I mean she is well, yes, and cared for--indeed, she is at the
palace--the women’s palace--but set your mind easy--she--”

With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth,
and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel
lived a lifetime in that moment.

“The palace!” he said in a bewildered way. “The women’s palace--the
women’s--” and then broke off shortly. “Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,”
 he said.

And Fatimah stammered, “Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can--”

“Fatimah,” said Israel, with an awful calm. “Can’t you see, woman,
I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not
understand?--I want to go to my daughter.”

“Yes, yes,” said Fatimah; “but you can never go to her any more. She is
in the women’s apartments--”

Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel’s throat.

“Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,” said Fatimah; “only listen.”

But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down
everything before it. Fatimah’s feeble protests were drowned. “Silence!”
 he cried. “What need is there for words? She is in the palace!--that’s
enough. The women’s palace--the hareem--what more is there to say?”

Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in
all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. “O
God!” he cried, “my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting,
starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home
to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy.
Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not
that, whatever happens! But the palace--the women’s palace. Naomi! My
little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn
that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to
see that she loved me! And now the hareem--that hell, and Ben Aboo--that
libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine--I wrestled
with God for it--”

He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to
his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven,
and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, “Kill her, O God!
Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!”

At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of
tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned
the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way
while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look.
Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own
condition: “I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed
my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh
slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.”

Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple
foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly
and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared
to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer--always
the same--that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he
seemed to hear a voice that cried, “Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!”
 “Here! Israel is here!” he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling
him. The Kaid was the King. “Yes, I will go back to the King,” he said.
Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt,
and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged
threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he
were a master still, “Bring me robes--clean robes--white robes; I am
going back to the King!”



CHAPTER XXIV

THE ENTRY OF THE SULTAN


Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty,
the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away,
encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment
of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed
for eight o’clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were
everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and
nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of
the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.

Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum,
and crying in a hoarse voice, “Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord!
Awake! Awake!”

In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds.
The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel
of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange
orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red
rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above
them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red
flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets
of various colours swung on many walls.

The sun was not yet high before the Sultan’s army began to arrive. It
was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment
of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their
heads--a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They
poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and
squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the
air, and shouting as they went, “Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is
coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!”

Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in
perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed
through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty
that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan
himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them
there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry
spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file,
not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a
hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking,
or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping
blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines
of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight
of God’s own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the
many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place.
They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose
villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven
into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.

It was seven o’clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan’s
train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast
human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance.
Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the
streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban
within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the
principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their
haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next,
a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the
walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was
coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from
their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish
people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and
children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at
tambourines and crying in wild discords, “God bless our Lord!” “God give
victory to our Lord the Sultan!”

The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the
Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them
with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar
crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.

“Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your
slippers--Abd er-Rahman is coming!”

Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed,
jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners
were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their
voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah
and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan
even from their roofs.

And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets,
having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among
themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed
and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the
Sultan’s train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls,
donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified
old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces
thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and
clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like
hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings,
quarrellings, cursings.

“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!”

“O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!”

“Curses on your grandfather!”

“Allah! Allah! Allah!”

“Balak! Balak! Balak!”

But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of
the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by
the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were
thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the
street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western
gate.

By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen
who had gathered there. The Sultan’s army was drawing near, a confused
and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they
came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs
could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river,
none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.

When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their
camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan
himself was at hand.

First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with
their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers
four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the
outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan’s six led horses. And
then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him,
came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks,
his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father
of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in
gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold.
Solomon’s seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar--a
safeguard against the evil eye--was suspended from its neck. Its saddle
was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were
of chased silver. The Sultan’s own trappings were of the colour of
his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern
girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and
transparent.

As he passed under the archway of the town’s gate the cannon of the
Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his
stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.

“God bless our Lord!”

“Sultan Abd er-Rahman!”

“God prolong the life of our Lord!”

He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the
Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to
the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless
the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening
acclamations.

“All’s well, all’s well,” they told each other, and pointed to the white
horse--the sign of peace--which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless
black horse--the sign of strife--that pranced behind him.

The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the
Sultan with a shrill ululation: “Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!”

Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some
of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin
coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more
articulate cries.

He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward.
Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy
cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of
State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his
head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the
greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem.
The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.

Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their
heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they
knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their
taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he
saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his
messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed
only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues.
And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.

Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops,
whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind
beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he
dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.

But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet
streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses
tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk
unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold
significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And
this was the way and the word of it:

“She is back in the Kasbah!”

“The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?”

“She has fallen sick.”

“And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?”

“He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.”

“Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
saved from the Sultan.”

“For the present, only for the-present.”

“For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.”

“Bismillah! Ben Oliel’s boy?”

“Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
the--”

“Ya Allah! well?”

“Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--”

“But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?”

“God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!”

“In peace!”



CHAPTER XXV

THE COMING OF THE MAHDI


The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
entered Tetuan that day.

He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
come upon the great body of the Sultan’s army lying encamped under
the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels’ load
of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
them.

“Away!” he had cried. “Away with your uncleanness and deception.”

And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
off like a pariah dog.

As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in
line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some
standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at
full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse’s length,
throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping
back, amid deafening shouts of “Allah! Allah! Allah!”

“Allah indeed!” cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without
fear. “That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and
bloodshed. Away, away!”

The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he
approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for
the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out
in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked
men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the
Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark
flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive
and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering
darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the
frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each
fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head
against the stones until blood ran like water.

“Fools and blind guides!” cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like
sheep. “Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the
abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but
forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away!
Away!”

At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after
various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding
ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha’s presence.
The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his
face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog
with his muzzle on his forepaws.

“Welcome,” he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious
posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.

The Mahdi did not sit. “Ben Aboo,” he said in a voice that was half
choked with anger, “I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to
you if you send me away unsatisfied.”

Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl,
“What is it now?”

“Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?” said the Mahdi.

With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which
his dusky muzzle had rested.

“Ah, do not lie to me,” cried the Mahdi. “I know where she is--she is in
prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime
but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the
other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.”

The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some
half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled
about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and
said with an air of mock inquiry, “Ya Allah! who is this infidel?”

Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, “Sir, I know who you are!
You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your
purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you
were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here--my guest and protector.
You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin
our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by
Allah you shall die!”

Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his
superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half
deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi
took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said--

“Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to
death. You dare not and you cannot do it.”

“Why not?” cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a
swagger. “What’s to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man
need know.”

“Basha,” said the Mahdi, “do you think you are talking to a child? Do
you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than
ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for
my return? And do you think, too,” he cried, lifting one hand and his
voice together, “that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on
an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I
say; you are a fool.”

The Basha’s face became black and swelled with rage. But he was
cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of
braggadocio--

“And what if I do not liberate the girl?”

“Then,” said the Mahdi, “if any evil befalls her the consequences shall
be on your head.”

“What consequences?” said the Basha.

“Worse consequences than you expect or dream,” said the Mahdi.

“What consequences?” said the Basha again.

“No matter,” said the Mahdi. “You are walking in darkness, and do not
know where you are going.”

“What consequences?” the Basha cried once more.

“That is God’s secret,” said the Mahdi.

Ben Aboo began to laugh. “Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,” he
shouted to his people.

“Enough!” cried the Mahdi. “I have delivered my message. Now woe to you,
Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come
no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison.
Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward
awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword
will reach to your soul.”

Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where
he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, “This is the last
word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben
Aboo--I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt,
and death and hell.”

Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place
where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks
under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.

But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed
through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the
stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, “Abd
er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the
sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me
for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd
er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you,
slave of the Compassionate!”

The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of
the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But
his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly
thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.

“The Mahdi,” they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.

The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers
of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms,
were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from
these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos
and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.

The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the
M’Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo’s came to him in secret.
It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had
visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also
of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as
well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in
gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he
listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before
him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of
night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was
imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father,
who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy
while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home.
These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of
Israel’s madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the
man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.

The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan’s
following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.

“O Tetuan,” thought the Mahdi, “how soon will your streets be uprooted
and your sanctuaries destroyed!”

The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
and still saddled, were up and feeding.

The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he
had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls
were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes,
which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his
right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected
air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was
one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare.
But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not
until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on
him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man
who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled
with God.

With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside
Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way,
telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came,
and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a
brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen
clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves
of his fingers were also frozen.

Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the
head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to
prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he
described the girl’s journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how
she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel’s face
that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully.
At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had
yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child,
seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though
she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from
Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers
trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his
cheeks.

“My poor darling!” he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he
asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.

The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against
the fortune intended for her--that of becoming a concubine of the
Sultan.

“My brave girl!” he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light
that was both pride and pain.

He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she
could hear: “Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old
father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!”

This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him,
and said in almost a childish tone, “I suppose there is no help for
it now, sir. I meant to take her to England--to my poor mother’s home,
but--”

“And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,” said the Mahdi, rising to
his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi’s rescue which he
had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had
clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous
impulse, should at length be carried into effect.



CHAPTER XXVI

ALI’S RETURN TO TETUAN


The plan which the Mahdi thought of had first been Ali’s, for the black
lad was back in Tetuan. After he had fulfilled his errand of mercy at
Shawan; he had gone on to Ceuta; and there, with a spirit afire for the
wrongs of his master, from whom he was so cruelly parted, he had set
himself with shrewdness and daring to incite the Spanish powers to
vengeance upon his master’s enemies. This had been a task very easy of
execution, for just at that time intelligence had come from the Reef, of
barbarous raids made by Ben Aboo upon mountain tribes that had hitherto
offered allegiance to the Spanish crown. A mission had gone up to Fez,
and returned unsatisfied. War was to be declared, Marteel was to be
bombarded, the army of Marshal O’Donnel was to come up the valley of the
river, and Tetuan was to be taken.

Such were the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely
revealed to Ali, but Ali’s own plan was a different matter. This was
the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the
eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to
give a “gathering of delight,” to the Sultan, his Ministers, his Kaids,
his Kadis, his Khaleefas, his Umana, and great rascals generally. Ali’s
stout heart stuck at nothing. He was for having the Spaniards brought up
to the gates of the town, on the very night when the whole majesty and
iniquity of Barbary would be gathered in one room; then, locking the
entire kennel of dogs in the banqueting hall, firing the Kasbah and
burning it to the ground, with all the Moorish tyrants inside of it like
rats in a trap.

One danger attended his bold adventure, for Naomi’s person was within
the Kasbah walls. To meet this peril Ali was himself to find his way
into the dungeon, deliver Naomi, lock the Kasbah gate, and deliver up to
another the key that should serve as a signal for the beginning of the
great night’s work.

Also one difficulty attended it, for while Ali would be at the Kasbah
there would be no one to bring up the Spaniards at the proper moment for
the siege--no one in Tetuan on whom the strangers could rely not to
lead them blindfold into a trap. To meet this difficulty Ali had gone in
search of the Mahdi, revealed to him his plan, and asked him to help
in the downfall of his master’s enemies by leading the Spaniards at the
right moment to the gates that should be thrown open to receive them.

Hearing Ali’s story, the Mahdi had been aflame with tender thoughts
of Naomi’s trials, with hatred of Ben Aboo’s tyrannies, and pity of
Israel’s miseries. But at first his humanity had withheld him from
sympathy with Ali’s dark purpose, so full, as it seemed, of barbarity
and treachery.

“Ali,” he had said, “is it not all you wish for to get Naomi out of
prison and take her back to her father?”

“Yes, Sidi,” Ali had answered promptly.

“And you don’t want to torture these tyrants if you can do what you
desire without it?”

“No-o, Sidi,” Ali had said doubtfully.

“Then,” the Mahdi had said, “let us try.”

But when the Mahdi was gone to Tetuan on his errand of warning that
proved so vain, Ali had crept back behind him, so that secretly and
independently he might carry out his fell design. The towns-people were
ready to receive him, for the air was full of rebellion, and many had
waited long for the opportunity of revenge. To certain of the Jews, his
master’s people, who were also in effect his own, he went first with his
mission, and they listened with eagerness to what he had come to say.
When their own time came to speak they spoke cautiously, after the
manner of their race, and nervously, like men who knew too well what
it was to be crushed and kept under; but they gave their help
notwithstanding, and Ali’s scheme progressed.

In less than three days the entire town, Moorish and Jewish, was
honeycombed with subterranean revolt. Even the civil guard, the soldiers
of the Kasbah, the black police that kept the gates, and the slaves that
stood before the Basha’s table were waiting for the downfall to come.

The Mahdi had gone again by this time, and the people had resumed their
mock rejoicings over the Sultan’s visit. These were the last kindlings
of their burnt-out loyalty, a poor smouldering pretence of fire. Every
morning the town was awakened by the deafening crackle of flintlocks,
which the mountaineers discharged in the Feddan by way of signal that
the Sultan was going to say his prayers at the door of some saint’s
house. Beside the firing of long guns and the twanging of the ginbri the
chief business of the day seemed to be begging. One bow-legged rascal
in a ragged jellab went about constantly with a little loaf of bread,
crying, “An ounce of butter for God’s sake!” and when some one gave him
the alms he asked he stuck the white sprawling mess on the top of the
loaf and changed his cry to “An ounce of cheese for God’s sake!” A pert
little vagabond--street Arab in a double sense--promenaded the town
barefoot, carrying an odd slipper in his hand, and calling on all men
by the love of God and the face of God and the sake of God to give him a
moozoonah towards the cost of its fellow. Every morning the Sultan went
to mosque under his red umbrella, and every evening he sat in the hall
of the court of justice, pretending to hear the petitions of the poor,
but actually dispensing charms in return for presents. First an old
wrinkled reprobate with no life left in him but the life of lust: “A
charm to make my young wife love me!” Then an ill-favoured hag behind
a blanket: “A charm to wither the face of the woman that my husband has
taken instead of me!” Again, a young wife with a tearful voice: “A charm
to make me bear children!” A greasy smile from the fat Sultan, a scrap
of writing to every supplicant, chinking coins dropped into the bag of
the attendant from the treasury, and then up and away. It was a nauseous
draught from the bitterest waters of Islam.

But, for all the religious tumult, no man was deceived by the outward
marks of devotion. At the corners of the streets, on the Feddan, by the
fountains, wherever men could meet and talk unheard, there they stood
in little groups, crossing their forefingers, the sign of strife,
or rubbing them side by side, the sign of amity. It was clear that,
notwithstanding the hubbub of their loyalty to the sultan, they knew
that the Spaniard was coming and were glad of it.

Meantime Ali waited with impatience for the day that was to see the end
of his enterprise. To beguile himself of his nervousness in the night,
during the dark hours that trailed on to morning, he would venture out
of the lodging where he lay in hiding throughout the day, and pick
his steps in the silence up the winding streets, until he came under a
narrow opening in an alley which was the only window to Naomi’s prison.
And there he would stay the long dark hours through, as if he thought
that besides the comfort it brought to him to be near to Naomi, the
tramp, tramp, tramp of his footsteps, which once or twice provoked the
challenge of the night-guard on his lonely round, would be company to
her in her solitude. And sometimes, watching his opportunity that he
might be unseen and unheard, he would creep in the darkness under the
window and cry up the wall in an underbreath, “Naomi! Naomi! It is I,
Ali! I have come back! All will be well yet!”

Then if he heard nothing from within he would torture himself with
a hundred fears lest Naomi should be no longer there, but in a worse
place; and if he heard a sob he would slink away like a dog with his
muzzle to the dust, and if he heard his own name echoed in the softer
voice he knew so well he would go off with head erect, feeling like a
man who walked on the stars rather than the stones of the street. But,
whatever befell, before the day dawned he went back to his lodging less
sore at heart for his lonely vigil, but not less wrathful or resolute.

The day of the feast came at length, and then Ali’s impatience rose
to fever. All day he longed for the night, that the thing he had to do
could be done. At last the sunset came and the darkness fell, and from
his place of concealment Ali saw the soldiers of the assaseen going
through the streets with lanterns to lead honoured guests to the
banquet. Then he set out on his errand. His foresight and wit had
arranged everything. The negro at the gate of the Kasbah pretended to
recognise him as a messenger of the Vizier’s, and passed him through. He
pushed his way as one with authority along the winding passages to the
garden where the Mahdi had called on Abd er-Rahman and foretold his
fate. The garden opened upon the great hall, and a number of guests were
standing there, cooling themselves in the night air while they waited
for the arrival of the Sultan. His Shereefian Majesty came at length,
and then, amid salaams and peace-blessings, the company passed in to
the banquet. “Peace on you!” “And on you the peace!” “God make your
evening!” “May your evening be blessed!”

Did Ali shrink from the task at that moment? No, a thousand times no!
While he looked on at these men in their muslin and gauze and linen and
scarlet, sweeping in with bows and hand-touchings to sup and to laugh
and to tell their pretty stories, he remembered Israel broken and alone
in the poor hut which had been described to him, and Naomi lying in her
damp cell beyond the wall.

Some minutes he stood in the darkness of the garden, while the guests
entered, and until the barefooted servants of the kitchen began to troop
in after them with great dishes under huge covers. Then he held a short
parley with the negro gatekeeper, two keys were handed to him, and in
another minute he was standing at the door of Naomi’s prison.

Now, carefully as Ali had arranged every detail of his enterprise, down
to the removal of the black woman Habeebah from this door, one fact he
had never counted with, and that seemed to him then the chief fact of
all--the fact that since he had last looked upon Naomi she had come by
the gift of sight, and would now first look upon _him_. That he would
be the same as a stranger to her, and would have to tell her who he was;
that she would have to recognise him by whatsoever means remained to
belie the evidence of the newborn sense--this was the least of Ali’s
trouble. By a swift rebound his heart went back to the fear that had
haunted him in the days before he left her with her father on his errand
to Shawan. He was black, and she would see him.

With the gliding of the key into the lock all this, and more than this,
flashed upon his mind. His shame was abject. It cut him to the quick.
On the other side of that door was she who had been as a sister to him
since times that were lost in the blue clouds of childhood. She had
played with him and slept by his side, yet she had never seen his face.
And she was fair as the morning, and he was black as the night! He had
come to deliver her. Would she recoil from him?

Ali had to struggle with himself not to fly away and leave everything.
But his stout heart remembered itself and held to its purpose. “What
matter?” he thought. “What matter about me?” he asked himself aloud in
a shrill voice and with a brave roll of his round head. Then he found
himself inside the cell.

The place was dark, and Ali drew a long breath of relief. Naomi must
have been lying at the farther end of it. She spoke when the door was
opened. As though by habit, she framed the name of her jailer Habeebah,
and then stopped with a little nervous cry and seemed to rise to her
feet. In his confusion Ali said simply, “It is I,” as though that meant
everything. Recovering himself in a moment he spoke again, and then she
knew his voice: “Naomi!”

“It’s Ali,” she whispered to herself. After that she cried in a
trembling undertone “Ali! Ali! Ali!” and came straight in the accustomed
darkness to the spot where he stood.

Then, gathering courage and voice together, Ali told her hurriedly why
he was there. When he said that her father was no longer in prison, but
at their home near Semsa and waiting to receive her, she seemed almost
overcome by her joy. Half laughing, half weeping, clutching at her
breast as if to ease the wild heaving of her bosom she was transformed
by his story.

“Hush!” said Ali; “not a sound until we are outside the town,” and Naomi
knitted her fingers in his palm, and they passed out of the place.

The banquet was now at its height, and hastening down dark corridors
where they were apt to fall, for they had no light to see by, and coming
into the garden, they heard the ripple and crackle of laughter from the
great hall where Ben Aboo and his servile rascals feasted together. They
reached the quiet alley outside the Kasbah (for the negro was gone from
his post), and drew a lone breath, and thanked Heaven that this much was
over. There had been no group of beggars at the gate, and the streets
around it were deserted; but in the distance, far across the town in the
direction of the Bab el Marsa, the gate that goes out to Marteel, they
heard a low hum as of vast droves of sheep. The Spaniard was coming, and
the townsmen were going out to meet him. Casual passers-by challenged
them, and though Ali knew that even if recognised they had nothing to
fear from the people, yet more than once his voice trembled when he
answered, and sometimes with a feeling of dread he turned to see that no
one was following.

As he did so he became aware of something which brought back the shame
of that awful moment when he stood with the key in hand at the door of
Naomi’s prison. By the light of the lamps in the hands of the passers-by
Naomi was looking at him. Again and again, as the glare fell for an
instant, he felt the eyes of the girl upon his face. At such moments he
thought she must be drawing away from him, for the space between them
seemed wider. But he firmly held to the outstretched arm, kept his head
aside, and hastened on.

“What matter about me?” he whispered again. But the brave word brought
him no comfort. “Now she’s looking at my hand,” he told himself, but
he could not draw it away. “She is doubting if I am Ali after all,” he
thought. “Naomi!” he tried to say with averted head, so that once again
the sound of his voice might reassure her; but his throat was thick, and
he could not speak. Still he pushed on.

The dark town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has
been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a
loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to
move and pass.

Drawing near to the Bab Toot, the gate that witnessed the last scene of
Israel’s humiliation and Naomi’s shame, Ali, with the girl beside him,
came suddenly into a sheet of light and a concourse of people. It was
the Mahdi and his vast following with lamps in their hands, entering the
town on the west, while the Spaniards whom they had brought up to the
gates were coming in on the east. The Mahdi himself was locking the
synagogues and the sanctuaries.

“Lock them up,” he was saying. “It is enough that the foreigner must
burn down the Sodom of our tyrant; let him not outrage the Zion of our
God.”

Ali led Naomi up to the Mahdi, who saw her then for the first time.

“I have brought her,” he said breathlessly; “Naomi, Israel’s daughter,
this is she.” And then there was a moment of surprise and joy, and pain
and shame and despair, all gathered up together into one look of the
eyes of the three.

The Mahdi looked at Naomi, and his face lightened. Naomi looked at Ali,
and her pale face grew paler, and she passed a tress of her fair hair
across her lips to smother a little nervous cry that began to break from
her mouth. Then she looked at the Mahdi, and her lips parted and her
eyes shone. Ali looked at both, and his face twitched and fell.

This was only the work of an instant, but it was enough. Enough for
the Mahdi, for it told him a secret that the wisdom of life had not yet
revealed; enough for Naomi, for a new sense, a sixth sense, had surely
come to her; enough for Ali also, for his big little heart was broken.

“What matter about me?” thought Ali again. “Take her, Mahdi,” he said
aloud in a shrill voice. “Her father is waiting for her--take her to
him.”

“Lady,” said the Mahdi, “can you trust me?”

And then without a word she went to him; like the needle to the magnet
she went to the Mahdi--a stranger to her, when all strangers were as
enemies--and laid her hand in his.

Ali began to laugh, “I’m a fool,” he cried. “Who could have believed
it? Why, I’ve forgotten to lock the Kasbah! The villains will escape. No
matter, I’ll go back.”

“Stop!” cried the Mahdi.

But Ali laughed so loudly that he did not hear. “I’ll see to it yet,” he
cried, turning on his heel. “Good night, Sidi! God bless you! My love to
my father! Farewell!”

And in another moment he was gone.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE FALL OF BEN ABOO


The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the
doom that was impending. Squatting on the floor in little circles,
around little tables covered with steaming dishes, wherein each plunged
his fingers, they began the feast with ceremonious wishes, pious
exclamations, cant phrases, and downcast eyes. First, “God lengthen your
age,” “God cover you,” and “God give you strength.” Then a dish of dates,
served with abject apologies from Ben Aboo: “You would treat us better
in Fez, but Tetuan is poor; the means, Seedna, the means, not the will!”
 Then fish in garlic, eaten with loud “Bismillah’s.” Then kesksoo covered
with powdered sugar and cinnamon, and meat on skewers, and browned
fowls, and fowls and olives, and flake pastry and sponge fritters, each
eaten in its turn amid a chorus of “La Ilah illa Allah’s.” Finally three
cups of green tea, as thick and sweet as syrup, drunk with many “Do me
the favour’s,” and countless “Good luck’s.” Last of all, the washing
of hands, and the fumigating of garments and beard and hair by the
live embers of scented wood burning in a brass censer, with incessant
exchanges of “The Prophet--God rest him--loved sweet odours almost as
much as sweet women.”

But after supper all this ceremony fell away, and the feasters thawed
down to a warm and flowing brotherhood. Lolling at ease on their rugs,
trifling with their egg-like snuff-boxes, fumbling their rosaries for
idleness more than piety, stretching their straps, and jingling on the
pavement the carved ends of their silver knife-shields, they laughed and
jested, and told dubious stories, and held doubtful discourse generally.
The talk turned on the distinction between great sins and little ones.
In the circle of the Sultan it was agreed that the great sins were two:
unbelief in the Prophet, whereby a man became Jew and dog; and smoking
keef and tobacco, which no man could do and be of correct life and
unquestionable Islam. The atonement for these great sins were five
prayers a day, thirty-four prostrations, seventeen chapters of the
Koran, and as many inclinations. All the rest were little sins; and
as for murder and adultery, and bearing false witness--well, God was
Merciful, God was Compassionate, God forgave His poor weak children.

This led to stories of the penalises paid by transgressors of the great
sins. These were terrible. Putting on a profound air, the Vizier, a fat
man of fifty, told of how one who smoked tobacco and denied the Prophet
had rotted piecemeal; and of how another had turned in his grave with
his face from Mecca. Then the Kaid of Fez, head of the Mosque and
general Grand Mufti, led away with stories of the little sins. These
were delightful. They pictured the shifts of pretty wives, married
to worn out old men, to get at their youthful lovers in the dark by
clambering in their dainty slippers from roof to roof. Also of the
discomfiture of pious old husbands and the wicked triumph of rompish
little ladies, under pretences of outraged innocence.

Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the
conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah. At every
fresh story the laughter became louder, and soon the reserve and dignity
of the Moor were left behind him and forgotten. At length Ben Aboo,
encouraged by the Sultan’s good fellowship, broke into loud praises of
Naomi, and yet louder wails over the doom that must be the penalty of
her apostasy; and thereupon Abd er-Rahman, protesting that for his
part he wanted nothing with such a vixen, called on him to uncover her
boasted charms to them. “Bring her here, Basha,” he said; “let us see
her,” and this command was received with tumultuous acclamations.

It was the beginning of the end. In less than a minute more, while the
rascals lolled over the floor in half a hundred different postures, with
the hazy lights from the brass lamps and the glass candelabras on their
dusky faces, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who
had been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then
Ben Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the
louder, until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running
with more startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;
the army of Marshall O’Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their
own people were opening the gates to him.

The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of
their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on
the southern side of it.

Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There
were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.
No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he
had killed the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and
taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his
selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.

It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and
Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,
near the wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the
grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds
of the night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead;
then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of
the crowd. “Damn it--they’ve given us the slip.” “Yes; they’ve crawled
off like rats from a sinking ship.” “Curse it all, it’s only a bungle.”
 This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country
Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: “Sidi, try the
palace.” “Try the apartments of his women, Sidi.” “Abd er-Rahman’s gone,
but Ben Aboo’s hiding.” “Death to the tyrant!” “Down with the Basha!”
 “Ben Aboo! Ben Aboo!” Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.
“Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!”

Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to
hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.
So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked
the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for
the women’s apartments, and rattled at their door. It was folly, it was
lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone. He could
hear the sounds of voices within--wailing and weeping of the women--but
no one answered his knocking. Again and again he knocked with his elbows
(still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw
through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood. Still the door
remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for
company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that
led to the alley behind the Kasbah.

Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
helping her flight. “We are safe,” she whispered--“they’ve gone back into
the Feddan--come;” and by the light of a lamp which she carried she made
for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary to the
Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door
back in Katrina’s face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and
for some minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.

The shout was Ali’s. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the
Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish
soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he
had traversed the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last,
on the spot where he had first seen him, he rushed in upon him and
brought him to the ground. Seeing Ben Aboo down, the black soldiers
fell upon Ali. The brave lad died with a shout of triumph. “Israel ben
Oliel,” he cried, as if he thought that name enough to save his soul and
damn the soul of Ben Aboo.

But Ben Aboo was not yet done with his own. The blow that had been aimed
at his heart had no more than grazed his shoulder. “Get up,” whispered
Katrina, half in wrath; and while she stooped to look for his wounds,
her face and hands as seen in the dim light of the lantern were bedaubed
with his blood. At that moment the guards were crying that the Kasbah
was afire, and at the next they were gone, leaving Katrina alone with
the unconscious man. “Get up,” she cried again, and tugging at Ben
Aboo’s unconscious body she struck it in her terror and frenzy. It was
every one for himself in that bad hour. Katrina followed the guards, and
was never afterwards heard of.

When Ben Aboo came to himself the patio was aglow with flames. He
staggered to his feet, still grappling to his breast the money-bags
hidden under his selham. Then, bleeding from his shoulder and with
blood upon his beard, he made afresh for the passage leading to the back
alley. The passage was narrow and dark. There were three winding steps
at the end of it. Ben Aboo was dizzy and he stumbled.

But the passage was silent, it was safe, and out in the alley a sea of
voices burst upon him. He could hear the tramp of countless footsteps,
the cries of multitudes of voices, and the rattle of flintlocks.
Lanterns, torches, flares and flashes of gunpowder came and went at both
ends of the long dark tunnel. In the light of these he saw a struggling
current of angry faces. The living sea encircled him. He knew what had
happened. At the first certainty that his power was gone and that there
was nothing to fear from his vengeance, his own people had gathered
together to destroy him.

There were two small mean houses on the opposite side of the alley, and
Ben Aboo tried to take refuge in the first of them. But the woman who
came with uncovered face to the door was the widow of the mason who had
built his strong-room. “Murderer and dog!” she cried, and shut the door
against him. He tried the other house. It was the house of the mason’s
son. “Forgive me,” he cried. “I am corrected by Allah! Yes, yes, it is
true I did wrong by your father, but forgive me and save me.” Thus he
pleaded, throwing himself on the ground and crawling there. “Dog and
coward,” the young man shouted, and beat him back into the street.

Ben Aboo’s terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of
a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick
breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where
he thought he might find a friend. “Alee, don’t you know me?” “Mohammed,
it is I, Ben Aboo.” “See, El Arby, here’s money, money; it’s yours,
only save me, save me!” With such frantic cries he raced about in
the darkness like a hunted wolf. But not a house would shelter him.
Everywhere he met relatives of men who had died through his means, and
he was driven away with curses.

Meantime, a rumour that Ben Aboo was in the streets had been bruited
abroad among the people, and their lust of blood was thereby raised to
madness. Screaming and spitting and raving, and firing their flintlocks,
they poured from street into street, watching for their victim and
seeing him in every shadow. “He’s here!” “He’s there!” “No, he’s
yonder!” “He’s scaling the high wall like a cat!”

Ben Aboo heard them. Their inarticulate cries came to him laden with
one message only--death. He could see their faces, their snarling teeth.
Sometimes he would rave and blaspheme. Then he would make another effort
for his life. But the whirlpool was closing in upon him; and at last,
like one who flings himself over a precipice from dizziness, fears,
and irresistible fascination, he flung himself into the middle of the
infuriated throng as they scurried across the open Feddan.

From that moment Ben Aboo’s doom was sealed. The people received him
with a long furious roar, a cry of triumphant execration, as if their
own astuteness at length had entrapped him. He stood with his back to
the high wall; the bellowing crowd was before him on either side. By the
torches that many carried all could see him. Turban and shasheeah had
fallen off, and the bald crown of his head was bare. His face retained
no human expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath
his selham, to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a
hand into the necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people.
“Silver,” he cried; “silver, silver for everybody.”

The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed
white through the air, and fell unheard. “Death to the Kaid!” was
shouted on every side. Nevertheless, though half the men carried guns,
no man fired. By unspoken consent it seemed to be understood that the
death of Ben Aboo was not to be the act of one, but of all. “Stones,”
 cried somebody out of the crowd, and in another moment everybody was
picking stones, and piling them at his feet or gathering them in the
skirt of his jellab.

Ben Aboo knew his awful fate. Gesticulating wildly, having flung the
money-bags from him, slobbering and screaming, the blighted soul was
seen to raise his eyes towards the black sky, his thick lubber lips
working visibly, as if in wild invocation of heaven. At the next instant
the stones began to fall on him. Slowly they fell at first, and he
reeled under them like a drunken man; the back of his neck arched itself
like the neck of a bull, and like the roar of a bull was the groan that
came from his throat. Then they fell faster, and he swayed to and
fro, and grunted, with his beard bobbing at his breast, and his tongue
lolling out. Faster and faster, and thicker and thicker they showered
upon him, darting out of the darkness like swallows of the night. His
clothes were rent, his blood spirted over them, he staggered as a beast
staggers in the slaughter, and at length his thick knees doubled up, and
he fell in a round heap like a ball.

The ferocity of the crowd was not yet quelled. They hailed the fall of
Ben Aboo with a triumphant howl, but their stones continued to shower
upon his body. In a little while they had piled a cairn above it.
Then they left it with curses of content and went their ways. When the
Spanish soldiers, who had stood aside while the work was done, came up
with their lanterns to look at this monument of Eastern justice, the
heap of stones was still moving with the terrific convulsions of death.

Such was the fall of El Arby, nicknamed Ben Aboo.



CHAPTER XXVIII

“ALLAH-U-KABAR”


Travelling through the night,--Naomi laughing and singing snatches in
her new-found joy, and the Mahdi looking back at intervals at the huge
outline of Tetuan against the blackness of the sky,--they came to the
hut by Semsa before dawn of the following day. But they had come too
late. Israel ben Oliel was not, after all, to set out for England. He
was going on a longer journey. His lonely hour had come to him, his dark
hour wherein none could bear him company. On a mattress by the wall he
lay outstretched, unconscious, and near to his end. Two neighbours
from the village were with him, and but for these he must have been
alone--the mighty man in his downfall deserted by all save the great
Judge and God.

What Naomi did when the first shock of this hard blow fell upon her,
what she said, and how she bore herself, it would be a painful task to
tell. Oh, the irony of fate! Ay, the irony of God! That scene, and what
followed it, looked like a cruel and colossal jest--none the less cruel
because long drawn out and as old as the days of Job.

It was useless to go out in search of a doctor. The country was as
innocent of leechcraft as the land of Canaan in the days of Abraham. All
they could do was to submit, absolutely and unconditionally. They were
in God’s hands.

The light was coming yellow and pink through the window under the eaves
as Israel awoke to consciousness. He opened his eyes as if from sleep,
and saw Naomi beside him. No surprise did he show at this, and neither
did he at first betray pleasure. Dimly and softly he looked upon her,
and then something that might have been a smile but for lack of strength
passed like sunshine out of a cloud across his wasted face. Naomi
pressed a pillow-under his loins, and another under his head,
thinking to ease the one and raise the other. But the iron hand of
unconsciousness fell upon him again, and through many hours thereafter
Naomi and the Mahdi sat together in silence with the multitudinous
company of invisible things.

During that interval Fatimah came in hot haste, and they had news of
Tetuan. The Spaniards had taken the town, but Abd er-Rahman and most of
his Ministers had escaped. Ben Aboo had tried to follow them, but he
had been killed in the alcove of the patio. Ali had killed him. He had
rushed in upon him through a line of his guards. One of the guards had
killed Ali. The brave black lad had fallen with the name of Israel on
his lips and with a dauntless shout of triumph. The Kasbah was afire; it
had been burning since the banquet of the night before.

Towards sunset peace fell upon Israel ben Oliel, and then they knew that
the end was very near. Naomi was still kneeling at his right hand, and
the Mahdi was standing at his left. Israel looked at the girl with a
world of tenderness, though the hard grip of death was fast stiffening
his noble face. More than once he glanced at the Mahdi also as if he
wished to say something, and yet could not do so, because the power of
life was low; but at last his voice found strength.

“I have left it too late,” he said. “I cannot go to England.”

Naomi wept more than ever at the sound of these faltering words, and it
was not without effort that the Mahdi answered him.

“Think no more of that,” he said, and then he stopped, as if the word
that he had been about to speak had halted on his tongue.

“It is hard to leave her,” said Israel, “for she is alone; and who will
protect her when I am gone?”

“God lives,” said the Mahdi, “and He is Father to the fatherless.”

“But what Jew,” said Israel, “would not repeat for her her father’s
troubles, and what Muslim could save her from her own?”

“Who that trusts in God,” said the Mahdi, “need fear the Kaid?”

“But what man can save her?” cried Israel again.

And then the Mahdi, touched by Naomi’s tears as well as her father’s
importunities, answered out of a hot heart and said--

“Peace, peace! If there is no one else to take her, from this day
forward she shall go with me.”

Naomi looked up at him then with such a light in her beautiful eyes
as he has often since, but had never before seen there, and Israel ben
Oliel who had been holding at his hand, clutched suddenly at his wrist.

“God bless you!” he said, as well as he could for the two angels, the
angel of love and the angel of death, were struggling at his throat.

Israel looked steadily at the Mahdi for a moment more, and then said
very softly--

“Death may come to me now; I am ready. Farewell, my father! I tried to
do your bidding. Do you remember your watchword? But God _has_ given me
rewards for repentance--see,” and he turned his eyes towards the eyes of
Naomi with a wasting yet sunny smile.

“God is good,” said the Mahdi; “lie still, lie still,” and he laid his
cool hand on Israel’s forehead.

“I am leaving her to you,” said Israel; “and you alone can protect her
of all men living in this land accursed of God, for God’s right arm is
round you. Yes, God is good. As long as you live you will cherish her.
Never was she so dear to me as now, so sweet, so lovable, so gentle. But
you will be good to her. God is very good to me. Guard her as the apple
of your eye. It will reward you. And let her think of me sometimes--only
sometimes. Ah! how nearly I shipwrecked all this! Remember! Remember!”

“Hush, hush! Do not increase your pains,” said the Mahdi. “Are you
feeling better now?”

“I am feeling well,” said Israel, “and happy--so happy.”

The sun had set, and the swift twilight was passing into night, when
another messenger arrived from Tetuan. It was Ali’s old Taleb, shedding
tears for his boy, but boasting loudly of his brave death. He had
heard of it from the black guards themselves. After Ali fell he lived
a moment, though only in unconsciousness. The boy must have thought
himself back at Israel’s side, “I’ve done it, father,” he said; “he’ll
never hurt you again. You won’t drive me away from you any more; will
you, father?”

They could see that Israel had heard the story. The eyes of the dying
are dry, but well they knew that the heart of the man was weeping.

The Taleb came with the idea that Israel also was gone, for a rumour to
that effect had passed through the town. “El hamdu l’Illah!” he
cried, when he saw that Israel was still alive. But then he remembered
something, and whispered in the Mahdi’s farther ear that a vast
concourse of Moors and Jews including his own vast fellowship was even
then coming out to bury Israel, thinking he was dead.

Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little
also. “It will soon be true,” he muttered under his breath, that came
so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the
distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.

Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty
bass voice: “Allah Akbar!” Again another and another voice:
“Allah Akbar!” and then the long roar of a vast multitude:
“Al--l--lah-u-kabar!” Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling
on the darkening air: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the
Prophet of God.”

It was a solemn sound--nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to
hear it.

O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!

Israel listened and smiled again. “Ah, God is great!” he whispered; “God
is great!”

To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to
the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession
approaching--a moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their
billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the
last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.

While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice
behind him. It was Israel’s voice. He was speaking to Naomi. “Yes,” he
was saying, “it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . .
But you must not cry. Listen! When I am there--eh? you know, _there_--I
will want to say, ‘Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little
daughter--she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.’
So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that’s
right, that’s right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy
girl!”

Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father’s will. She
was combing his white beard with her fingers--it was knotted and
tangled--and he was labouring hard to speak again.

“Naomi, do you remember?” he said; and then he tried to sing, and even
to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. “Do
you remember--

     Within my heart a voice
     Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
     Sings ‘Love’--”

But his strength was spent, and he had to stop.

“Sing it,” he whispered, with a poor broken smile at his own failure.
And then the brave girl--all courage and strength, a quivering bow of
steel--took up the song where he had left it, though her voice trembled
and the tears started to her eyes.

As Naomi sang Israel made some poor shift to beat the time to her,
though once and again his feeble hand fell back into his breast. When
she had done singing Israel looked at the Mahdi and then at her, and
smiled, as if he and she and the song were one to him.

But indeed Naomi had hardly finished when the wail came again, now
nearer than before, and louder. Israel heard it. “Hark! They are coming.
Keep close,” he muttered.

He fumbled and tugged with one hand at the breast of his kaftan. The
Mahdi thought his throat wanted air, but Naomi, with the instinct of
help that a woman has in scenes like these, understood him better. In
the disarray of his senses this was his way of trying to raise himself
that he might listen the easier to the song outside. The girl slid her
arm under his neck, and then his shrunken hand was at rest. “Ah! closer.
‘God is great’!” he murmured again. “‘God--is--great’!” With that word
on his lips he smiled and sighed, and sank back. It was now quite dark.

When the Mahdi returned to his place at Israel’s feet the dying man
seemed to have been feeling for his hand. Taking it now, he brought it
to his breast, where Naomi’s hand lay under his own trembling one. With
that last effort, and a look into the girl’s face that must have pursued
him home, his grand eyes closed for ever.

In the silence that followed after the departing spirit the deep swell
of the funeral wail came rolling heavily on the night air: “Allah Akbar!
Al-lah-u-kabar!”

In a few minutes more the procession of the people of Tetuan who had
come out to bury Israel ben Oliel had arrived at the house.

“He has gone,” said the Mahdi, pointing down; and then lifting his eyes
towards heaven, he added, “TO THE KING!”



Notes: 1. Italic text starts and ends with an underscore. 2. Where
spelling inconsistencies in the printed text appear to be unintentional,
they have been made consistent in this Etext version, either by adopting
the dictionary spelling or the spelling most frequently used in the
printed text. 3. In the printed text, many representations of Arabic
words use accented characters; in this Etext version, the accents have
been removed to allow transmission by email using the 7-bit character
set.





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