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 himSidi(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.”
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!”
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.”