The Scapegoat

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