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.
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!”
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.
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