Such was the method of Israel's release. But, knowing nothing of the price which had been paid for it, he was filled with an immense joy. Nay, his happiness was quite childish, so suddenly had the darkness which hung over his life been lifted away. Any one who had seen him in prison would have been puzzled by the change as he came away from it. He laughed with the courier who walked with him to the town gate, and jested with the gate porter as with an old acquaintance. His voice was merry, his eye gleamed in the rays of the lantern, his face was flushed, and his step was light. “Afraid to travel in the night? No, no, I'll meet nothing worse than myself. Othersmaywho meet me? Ha, ha! Perhaps so, perhaps so!” “No evil with you, brother?” “No evil, praise be God.” “Well, peace be to you!” “On you be peace!” “May your morning be blessed! Good-night!” “Good-night!” Then with a wave of the hand he was gone into the darkness.
It was a wonderful night. The moon, which was in its first quarter, was still low in the east, but the stars were thick overhead, making a silvery dome that almost obliterated the blue. Rivers were rumbling on the hillside, an owl was hooting in the distance, kine that could not be seen were chewing audibly near at hand, and sheep like patches of white in the gloom were scuttling through the grass before Israel's footsteps. Israel walked quickly, tracing his course between the two arms of the Jebel Sheshawan, whose summits were visible against the sky. The air was cool and moist, and a gentle breeze was blowing from the sea. Oh! the joy of it to him who had lain long months in prison! Israel drank in the night air as a young colt drinks in the wind.
And if it was night in the world without, it was day in Israel's heart. “I am going to be happy,” he told himself, “yes, very happy, very happy.” He raised his eyes to heaven, and a star, bigger and brighter than the rest, hung over the path before him. “It is leading me to Naomi,” he thought. He knew that was folly, but he could not restrain his mind from foolishness. And at least she had the same moon and stars above her sleep, for she would be sleeping now. “I am coming,” he cried. He fixed his eye on the bright star in front and pushed forward, never resting, never pausing.
The morning dawned. Long rippling waves of morning air came down the mountains, cool, chill, and moist. The grey light became tinged with red. Then the sun rose somewhere. It had not yet appeared, but the peak of the western hill was flushed and a raven flew out and perched on the point of light. Israel's breast expanded, and he strode on with a firmer step. “She will be waking soon,” he told himself.
The world awoke. From unseen places birds began to sing—the wheatear in the crevices of the rocks, the sedge-warbler among the rushes of the rivers. The sun strode up over the hill summit, and then all the earth below was bright. Dewdrops sparkled on the late flowers, and lay like vast spiders' webs over the grass; sheep began to bleat, dogs to bark, kine to low, horses to cross each other's necks, and over the freshness of the air came the smell of peat and of green boughs burning. Israel did not stop, but pushed on with new eagerness. “She will have risen now,” he told himself. He could almost fancy he saw her opening the door and looking out for him in the sunlight.
“Poor little thing,” he thought, “how she misses me! But I am coming, I am coming!”
The country looked very beautiful, and strangely changed since he saw it last. Then it had been like a dead man's face; now it was like a face that was always smiling. And though the year was so old it seemed to be quite young. No tired look of autumn, no warning of winter; only the freshness and vigour of spring. “I am going to see my child, and I shall be happy yet,” thought Israel. The dust of life seemed to hang on him no longer.
He came to a little village called Dar el Fakeer—“the house of the poor one.” The place did not even justify its name, for it was a cinereous wreck. Not a living creature was to be seen anywhere. The village had been sacked by the Sultan's army, and its inhabitants had fled to the mountains. Israel paused a moment, and looked into one of the ruined houses. He knew it must have been the house of a Jew, for he could recognise it by its smell. The floor was strewn over with rubbish—cans, kettles, water-bottles, a woman's handkerchief, and a dainty red slipper. On the ragged grass in the court within there were some little stones built up into tiny squares, and bits of stick stuck into the ground in lines. A young girl had lived in that house; children had played there; the gaunt and silent place breathed of their spirits still. “Poor souls!” thought Israel, but the troubles of others could not really touch him. At that very moment his heart was joyful.
The day was warm, but not too hot for walking. Israel did not feel weary, and so he went on without resting. He reckoned how far it was from Shawan to his home near Semsa. It was nearly seventy miles. That distance would take two days and two nights to cover on foot. He had left the prison on Wednesday night, and it would be Friday at sunset before he reached Naomi. It was now Thursday morning. He must lose no time. “You see, the poor little thing will be waiting, waiting, waiting,” he told himself. “These sweet creatures are all so impatient; yes, yes, so foolishly impatient. God bless them!”
He met people on the road, and hailed them with good cheer. They answered his greetings sadly, and a few of them told him of their trouble. Something they said of Ben Aboo, that he demanded a hundred dollars which they could not pay, and something of the Sultan, that he had ransacked their houses and then gone on with his great army, his twenty wives, and fifteen tents to keep the feast at Tetuan. But Israel hardly knew what they told him, though he tried to lend an ear to their story. He was thinking out a wonderful scheme for the future. With Naomi he was to leave Morocco. They were to sail for England. Free, mighty, noble, beautiful England! Ah, how it shone in his memory, the little white island of the sea! His mother's home! England! Yes, he would go back to it. True, he had no friends there now; but what matter of that? Ah, yes, he was old, and the roll-call of his kindred showed him pitiful gaps. His mother! Ruth! But he had Naomi still. Naomi! He spoke her name aloud, softly, tenderly, caressingly, as if his wrinkled hand were on her hair. Then recovering himself, he laughed to think that he could be so childish.
Near to sunset he came upon a dooar, a tent village, in a waste place. It was pitched in a wide circle, and opened inwards. The animals were picketed in the centre, where children and dogs were playing, and the voices of men and women came from inside the tents. Fires were burning under kettles swung from triangles, and sight of this reminded Israel that he had not eaten since the previous day. “I must have food,” he thought, “though I do not feel hungry.” So he stopped, and the wandering Arabs hailed him. “Markababikum!” they cried from where they sat within.
“You are very welcome! Welcome to our lofty land!” Their land was the world.
Israel went into one of the tents, and sat down to a dish of boiled beans and black bread. It was very sweet. A man was eating beside him; a woman, half dressed, and with face uncovered, was suckling a child while she worked a loom which was fastened to the tent's two upright poles. Some fowls were nestling for the night under the tent wing, and a young girl was by turns churning milk by tossing it in a goat's-skin and baking cakes on a fire of dried thistles crackling in a hole over three stones. All were laughing together, and Israel laughed along with them.
“On a long journey, brother?” said the man.
“No, oh no, no,” said Israel. “Only to Semsa, no farther.”
“Well, you must sleep here to-night,” said the Arab.
“Ah, I cannot do that,” said Israel.
“No?”
“You see, I am going back to my little daughter. She is alone, poor child, and has not seen her old father for months. Really it is wrong of a man to stay away such a time. These tender creatures are so impatient, you know. And then they imagine such things, do they not? Well, I suppose we must humour them—that's what I always say.”
“But look, the night is coming, and a dark one, too!” said the woman.
“Oh, nothing, that's nothing, sister,” said Israel. “Well, peace! Farewell all, farewell!”
Waving his hand he went away laughing, but before he had gone far the darkness overtook him. It came down from the mountains like a dense black cloud. Not a star in the sky, not a gleam on the land, darkness ahead of him, darkness behind, one thick pall hanging in the air on every side. Still for a while he toiled along. Every step was an effort. The ground seemed to sink under him. It was like walking on mattresses. He began to feel tired and nervous and spiritless. A cold sweat broke out on his brow, and at length, when the sound of a river came from somewhere near, though on which side of him he could not tell, he had no choice but to stop. “After all, it is better,” he thought. “Strange, how things happen for the best! I must sleep to-night, for to-morrow night I will get no sleep at all. No, for I shall have so many things to say and to ask and to hear.”
Consoling him thus, he tried to sleep where he was, and as slumber crept upon him in the darkness, with five-and-twenty heavy miles of dense night between him and his home, he crooned and talked to himself in a childish way that he might comfort his aching heart. “Yes, I must sleep—sleep—to-morrowshemust sleep and I must watch by her—watch by her as I used to do—used to do—how soft and beautiful—how beautiful—sleeping—sleep—Ah!”
When he awoke the sun had risen. The sea lay before him in the distance, the blue Mediterranean stretching out to the blue sky. He was on the borders of the country of the Beni-Hassan, and, after wading the river, which he had heard in the night, he began again on his journey. It was now Friday morning, and by sunset of that day he would be back at his home near Semsa. Already he could see Tetuan far away, girt by its white walls, and perched on the hillside. Yonder it lay in the sunlight, with the snow-tipped heights above it, a white blaze surrounded by orange orchards.
But how dizzy he was! How the world went round! How the earth trembled! Was the glare of the sun too fierce that morning, or had his eyes grown dim? Going blind? Well, even so, he would not repine, for Naomi could see now. She would see for him also. How sweet to see through Naomi's eyes! Naomi was young and joyous, and bright and blithe. All the world was new to her, and strange and beautiful. It would be a second and far sweeter youth.
Naomi—Naomi—always Naomi! He had thought of her hitherto as she had appeared to him during the few days of their happy lives at Semsa. But now he began to wonder if time had not changed her since then. Two months and a half—it seemed so long! He had visions of Naomi grown from a sweet girl to a lovely woman. A great soul beamed out of her big, slow eyes. He himself approached her meekly, humbly, reverently. Nevertheless, he was her father still—her old, tired, dim-eyed father; and she led him here and there, and described things to him. He could see and hear it all. First Naomi's voice: “A bow in the sky—red, blue, crimson—oh!” Then his own deeper one, out of its lightsome darkness: “A rainbow, child!” Ah! the dreams were beautiful!
He tried to recall the very tones of Naomi's voice—the voice of his poor dead Ruth—and to remember the song that she used to sing—the song she sang in the patio on that great night of the moonlight, when he was returning home from the Bab Ramooz, and heard her singing from the street—
Within my heart a voiceBids earth and heaven rejoice.
He sang the song to himself as he toiled along. With a little lisp he sang it, so that he might cheat himself and think that the voice he was making was Naomi's voice and not his own.
Towards midday Israel came under the walls of Tetuan, between the Sultan's gardens and the flour-mills that are turned by the escaping sewers, and there he lit upon a company of Jews. They were a deputation that had come out from the town to meet him, and at first sight of his face they were shocked. He had left Tetuan a stricken man, it was true, but strong and firm, fifty years of age and resolute. Six months had passed, and he was coming back as a weak, broken, shattered, doddering, infirm old man of eighty. Their hearts fell low before they spoke, but after a pause one of them—Israel knew him: a grey-bearded man, his name was Solomon Laredo—stepped up and said, “Israel ben Oliel, our poor Tetuan is in trouble. It needs you. Alas! we dealt ill with you, but God has punished us, and we are brothers now. Come back to us, we pray of you; for we have heard of a great thing that is coming to pass. Listen!”
Something they told him then of Mohammed of Mequinez, follower of Seedna Aissa (Jesus of Nazareth), but a good man nevertheless, and also something they said of the Spaniards and of one Marshal O'Donnel, who was to bombard Marteel. But Israel heard very little. “I think my hearing must be failing me,” he said; and then he laughed lightly, as if that did not greatly matter. “And to tell you the truth, though I pity my poor brethren, I can no longer help them. God will raise up a better minister.”
“Never!” cried the Jews in many voices.
“Anyhow,” said Israel, “my life among you is ended. I set no store by place and power. What does the English poet say, 'In the great hand of God I stand.' Shakespeare—oh, a mighty creature—one who knew where the soul of a man lay. But I forget, you've not lived in England. Do you know I am to go there again, and to take my little daughter? You remember her—Naomi—a charming girl. She can see now, and hear, and speak also! Yes for God has lifted His hand away from her, and I am going to be very happy. Well, I must leave you, brothers. The little one will be waiting. I must not keep her too long, must I? Peace, peace!”
Seeing his profound faith, no one dared to tell him the truth that was on every tongue. A wave of compassion swept over all. The deputation stood and watched him until he had sunk under the hill.
And now, being come thus near to home, Israel's impatience robbed him of some of his happy confidence and filled him with fears. He began to think of all the evil chances that might have befallen Naomi. His absence had been so long, and so many things might have happened since he went away. In this mood he tried to run. It was a poor uncertain shamble. At nearly every step the body lurched for poise and balance.
At last he came to a point of the path from which, as he knew, the little rush-covered house ought to be seen. “It's yonder,” he cried, and pointed it out to himself with uplifted finger. The sun was sinking, and its strong rays were in his face. “She's there, I see her!” he shouted. A few minutes later he was near the door. “No, my eyes deceived me,” he said in a damp voice. “Or perhaps she has gone in—perhaps she's hiding—the sweet rogue!”
The door was half open; he pushed it and entered the house. “Naomi!” he called in a voice like a caress. “Naomi!” His voice trembled now. “Come to me, come, dearest; come quickly, quickly, I cannot see!” He listened. There was not a sound, not a movement. “Naomi!” The name was like a gurgle in his throat. There was a pause, and then he said very feebly and simply, “She's not here.”
He looked around, and picked up something from the floor. It was a slipper covered with mould. As he gazed upon it a change came over his face. Dead? Was Naomi dead? He had thought of death before—for himself, for others, never for Naomi. At a stride the awful thing was on him. Death! Oh, oh!
With a helpless, broken, blind look he was standing in the middle of the floor with the slipper in his hand, when a footstep came to the door. He flung the slipper away and threw open his arms. Naomi—it must be she!
It was Fatimah. She had come in secret, that the evil news of what had been done at the Kasbah and the Mosque might not be broken to Israel too suddenly. He met her with a terrible question. “Where is she laid?” he said in a voice of awe.
Fatimah saw his error instantly. “Naomi is alive,” she said, and, seeing how the clouds lifted off his face, she added quickly, “and well, very well.”
That is not telling a falsehood, she thought; but when Israel, with a cry of joy which was partly pain, flung his arms about her, she saw what she had done.
“Where is she?” he cried. “Bring her, you dear, good soul. Why is she not here? Lead me to her, lead me!”
Then Fatimah began to wring her hands. “Alas!” she said, weeping, “that cannot be.”
Israel steadied himself and waited. “She cannot come to you, and neither can you go to her.” said Fatimah. “But she is well, oh! very well. Poor child, she is at the Kasbah—no, no, not the prison—oh no, she is happy—I mean she is well, yes, and cared for—indeed, she is at the palace—the women's palace—but set your mind easy—she—”
With such broken, blundering words the good woman blurted out the truth, and tried to deaden the blow of it. But the soul lives fast, and Israel lived a lifetime in that moment.
“The palace!” he said in a bewildered way. “The women's palace—the women's—” and then broke off shortly. “Fatimah, I want to go to Naomi,” he said.
And Fatimah stammered, “Alas! alas! you cannot, you never can—”
“Fatimah,” said Israel, with an awful calm. “Can't you see, woman, I have come home? I and Naomi have been long parted. Do you not understand?—I want to go to my daughter.”
“Yes, yes,” said Fatimah; “but you can never go to her any more. She is in the women's apartments—”
Then a great hoarse groan came from Israel's throat.
“Poor child, it was not her fault. Listen,” said Fatimah; “only listen.”
But Israel would hear no more. The torrent of his fury bore down everything before it. Fatimah's feeble protests were drowned. “Silence!” he cried. “What need is there for words? She is in the palace!—that's enough. The women's palace—the hareem—what more is there to say?”
Putting the fact so to his own consciousness, and seeing it grossly in all its horror, his passion fell like a breaking in of waters. “O God!” he cried, “my enemy casts me into prison. I lie there, rotting, starving. I think of my little daughter left behind alone. I hasten home to her. But where is she? She is gone. She is in the house of my enemy. Curse her! . . . . Ah! no, no; not that, either! Pardon me, O God; not that, whatever happens! But the palace—the women's palace. Naomi! My little daughter! Her face was so sweet, so simple. I could have sworn that she was innocent. My love! my dove! I had only to look at her to see that she loved me! And now the hareem—that hell, and Ben Aboo—that libertine! I have lost her for ever! Yet her soul was mine—I wrestled with God for it—”
He stopped suddenly, his face became awfully discoloured, he dropped to his knees on the floor, lifted his eyes and his hands towards heaven, and cried in a voice at once stern and heartrending, “Kill her, O God! Kill her body, O my God, that her soul may be mine again!”
At this awful cry Fatimah fled out of the hut. It was the last voice of tottering reason. After that he became quiet, and when Fatimah returned the following morning he was talking to himself in a childish way while sitting at the door, and gazing before him with a lifeless look. Sometimes he quoted Scriptures which were startlingly true to his own condition: “I am alone, I am a companion to owls. . . . I have cleansed my heart in vain. . . . My feet are almost gone, my steps have well-nigh slipped. . . . I am as one whom his mother comforteth.”
Between these Scriptures there were low incoherent cries and simple foolish play-words. Again and again he called on Naomi, always softly and tenderly, as if her name were a sacred thing. At times he appeared to think that he was back in prison, and made a little prayer—always the same—that some one should be kept from harm and evil. Once he seemed to hear a voice that cried, “Israel ben Oliel! Israel ben Oliel!” “Here! Israel is here!” he answered. He thought the Kaid was calling him. The Kaid was the King. “Yes, I will go back to the King,” he said. Then he looked down at his tattered kaftan, which was mired with dirt, and tried to brush it clean, to button it, and to tie up the ragged threads of it. At last he cried, as if servants were about him and he were a master still, “Bring me robes—clean robes—white robes; I am going back to the King!”
Meantime Tetuan was looking for the visit of His Shereefian Majesty, the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. He had been heard of about four hours away, encamped with his Ministers, a portion of his hareem, and a detachment of his army, somewhere by the foot of Beni Hosmar. His entry was fixed for eight o'clock next morning, and preparations for his coming were everywhere afoot. All other occupations were at a standstill, and nothing was to be heard but the noise and clamour of the cleansing of the streets, and the hanging of flags and of carpets.
Early on the following morning a street-crier came, beating a drum, and crying in a hoarse voice, “Awake! Awake! Come and greet your Lord! Awake! Awake!”
In a little while the streets were alive with motley and noisy crowds. The sun was up, if still red and hazy, and sunlight came like a tunnel of gold down the swampy valley and from over the sea; the orange orchards lying to the south, called the gardens of the Sultan, were red rather than yellow, and the snowy crests of the mountain heights above them were crimson rather than white. In the town itself the small red flag that is the Moorish ensign hung out from every house, and carpets of various colours swung on many walls.
The sun was not yet high before the Sultan's army began to arrive. It was a mixed and noisy throng that came first, a sort of ragged regiment of Arabs, with long guns, and with their gun-cases wrapped about their heads—a big gang of wild country-folk lately enlisted as soldiers. They poured into the town at the western gate, and shuffled and jostled and squeezed their way through the narrow streets firing recklessly into the air, and shouting as they went, “Abd er-Rahman is coming! The Sultan is coming! Dogs! Men! Believers! Infidels! Come out! come out!”
Thus they went puffing along, covered with dust and sweltering in perspiration, and at every fresh shot and shout the streets they passed through grew denser. But it was a grim satire on their lawless loyalty that almost at their heels there came into the town, not the Sultan himself, but a troop of his prisoners from the mountains. Ten of them there were in all, guarded by ten soldiers, and they made a sorry spectacle. They were chained together, man to man in single file, not hand to hand or leg to leg but neck to neck. So had they walked a hundred miles, never separated night or day, either sleeping or waking, or faint or strong. The feet of some were bare and torn, and dripping blood; the faces of all were black with grime, and streaked with lines of sweat. And thus they toiled into the streets in that sunlight of God's own morning, under the red ensigns of Morocco, by the many-coloured carpets of Rabat, to the Kasbah beyond the market-place. They were Reefians whose homes the Sultan had just stripped, whose villages he had just burnt, whose wives and children he had just driven into the mountains. And they were going to die in his dungeons.
It was seven o'clock by this time, and rumour had it that the Sultan's train was moving down the valley. From the roofs of the houses a vast human ant-hill could be seen swarming across the plain in the distance. Then came some rapid transformations of the scene below. First the streets were deserted by every decent blue jellab and clean white turban within range of sight. These presently reappeared on the roofs of the principal thoroughfare, where groups of women, closely covered in their haiks, had already begun to congregate with their dark attendants. Next, a body of the townsmen who possessed firearms mounted guard on the walls to protect the town from the lawlessness of the big army that was coming. Then into the Feddan, the square marketplace, came pouring from their own little quarter within its separate walls a throng of Jewish people, in their black gabardines and skull-caps, men and women and children, carrying banners that bore loyal inscriptions, twanging at tambourines and crying in wild discords, “God bless our Lord!” “God give victory to our Lord the Sultan!”
The poor Jews got small thanks for such loyalty to the last of the Caliphs of the Prophet. Every ragged Moor in the streets greeted them with exclamations of menace and abhorrence. Even the blind beggar crouching at the gate lifted up his voice and cursed them.
“Get out, you Jew! God burn your father! Dogs, take off your slippers—Abd er-Rahman is coming!”
Thus they were scolded and abused on every side, kicked, cuffed, jostled, and wedged together well-nigh to suffocation. Their banners were torn out of their hands, their tambourines were broken, their voices were drowned, and finally they were driven back into their Mellah and shut up there, and forbidden to look upon the entry of the Sultan even from their roofs.
And the vagabonds and ragamuffins among the faithful in the streets, having got rid of the unbelievers had enough ado to keep peace among themselves. They pushed and struggled and stormed and cried and laughed and clamoured down this main artery of the town through which the Sultan's train must pass. Men and boys, women also and young girls, donkeys with packs, bony mules too, and at least one dirty and terrified old camel. It was a confused and uproarious babel. Angry black faces thrust into white ones, flashing eyes and gleaming white teeth, and clenched fists uplifted. Human voices barking like dogs, yelping like hyenas, shrill and guttural, piercing and grating. Prayings, beggings, quarrellings, cursings.
“Arrah! Arrah! Arrah!”
“O Merciful! O Giver of good to all!”
“Curses on your grandfather!”
“Allah! Allah! Allah!”
“Balak! Balak! Balak!”
But presently the wild throng fell into order and silence. The gate of the Kasbah was thrown open, and a line of soldiers came out, headed by the Kaid of Tetuan, and moved on towards the city wall. The rabble were thrust back, the soldiers were drawn up in lines on either side of the street, and the Kaid, Ben Aboo himself, took a position by the western gate.
By this time there was commotion on the town walls among the townsmen who had gathered there. The Sultan's army was drawing near, a confused and disorderly mass of human beings moving on from the plain. As they came up to the walls, the people who were standing on the house-roofs could see them, and as they were ordered away to encamp by the river, none could help but hear their shouts and oaths.
When the motley and noisy concourse had been driven off to their camping-ground, the gates of the town were thrown wide, for the Sultan himself was at hand.
First came two soldiers afoot, and then followed five artillerymen, with their small pieces packed on mules. Next came mounted standard-bearers four deep, some in red, some in blue, and some in green. Then came the outrunners and the spearmen, and then the Sultan's six led horses. And then at length with the great red umbrella of royalty held over him, came the Sultan himself, the elderly sensualist, with his dusky cheeks, his rheumy eyes, his thick lips, and his heavy nostrils. The fat Father of Islam was mounted that day on a snow-white stallion, bedecked in gorgeous trappings. Its bridle was of green silk, embroidered in gold. Solomon's seal was stamped on its headgear, and the tooth of a boar—a safeguard against the evil eye—was suspended from its neck. Its saddle was of orange damask, with girths of stout silk, and its stirrups were of chased silver. The Sultan's own trappings were of the colour of his horse. His kaftan was of white cloth, with an embroidered leathern girdle; his turban was of white cotton, and his kisa was also white and transparent.
As he passed under the archway of the town's gate the cannon of the Kasbah boomed forth a salute, Ben Aboo dismounted and kissed his stirrup, and the crowds in the streets burst upon him with blessings.
“God bless our Lord!”
“Sultan Abd er-Rahman!”
“God prolong the life of our Lord!”
He seemed hardly to hear them. Once his hand touched his breast when the Kaid approached him. After that he looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor gave any sign of pleasure or recognition. Nevertheless the people in the streets ceased not to greet him with deafening acclamations.
“All's well, all's well,” they told each other, and pointed to the white horse—the sign of peace—which the Sultan rode, and to the riderless black horse—the sign of strife—that pranced behind him.
The women on the housetops also, in their hooded cloaks, welcomed the Sultan with a shrill ululation: “Yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo, yoo-yoo!”
Not content with this, the usual greeting of their sex and nation, some of them who had hitherto been closely veiled threw back their muslin coverings, exposed their faces to his face, and welcomed him with more articulate cries.
He gave them neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward. Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the greater. After the Ministers of State came a part of the royal hareem. The ladies rode on mules, and were attended by eunuchs.
Such was the entry into Tetuan of the Sultan Abd er-Rahman. In their heart of hearts did the people rejoice at his visit? No. Too well they knew that the tyrant had done nothing for his subjects but take their taxes. Not a man had he protected from injustice; not a woman had he saved from dishonour. Never a rich usurer among them but trembled at his messages, nor a poor wretch but dreaded his dungeons. His law existed only for himself; his government had no object but to collect his dues. And yet his people had received him amid wild vociferations of welcome.
Fear, fear! Fear it was in the heart of the rich man on the housetops, whose moneys were hidden, as well as in the darkened soul of the blind beggar at the gate, whose eyes had been gouged out long ago because he dared not divulge the secret place of his wealth.
But early in the evening of that same day, at the corners of quiet streets, in the covered ways, by the doors of bazaars, among the horses tethered in the fondaks, wheresoever two men could stand and talk unheard and unobserved by a third, one secret message of twofold significance passed with the voice of smothered joy from lip to lip. And this was the way and the word of it:
“She is back in the Kasbah!”
“The daughter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?”
“She has fallen sick.”
“And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?”
“He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest.”
“Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is saved from the Sultan.”
“For the present, only for the-present.”
“For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him.”
“Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?”
“Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes the—”
“Ya Allah! well?”
“Hark! A footstep on the street—some one is near—”
“But quick. Behind the Mahdi—what?”
“God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!”
“In peace!”
The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had entered Tetuan that day.
He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades. Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of them.
“Away!” he had cried. “Away with your uncleanness and deception.”
And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk off like a pariah dog.
As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of excited spectators. Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some standing. Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length, throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping back, amid deafening shouts of “Allah! Allah! Allah!”
“Allah indeed!” cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without fear. “That is all the part that God plays in this land of iniquity and bloodshed. Away, away!”
The people separated, and the Mahdi turned towards the Kasbah. As he approached it, the lanes leading to the Feddan were being cleared for the mad antics of the Aissawa. Before they saw him the fanatics came out in all the force of their acting brotherhood, a score of half-naked men, and one other entirely naked, attended by their high-priests, the Mukaddameen, three old patriarchs with long white beards, wearing dark flowing robes and carrying torches. Then goats and dogs were riven alive and eaten raw; while women and children; crouching in the gathering darkness overhead looked down from the roofs and shuddered. And as the frenzy increased among the madmen, and their victims became fewer, each fanatic turned upon himself, and tore his own skin and battered his head against the stones until blood ran like water.
“Fools and blind guides!” cried the Mahdi sweeping them before him like sheep. “Is this how you turn the streets into a sickening sewer? Oh, the abomination of desolation! You tear yourselves in the name of God, but forget His justice and mercy. Away! You will have your reward. Away! Away!”
At the gate of the Kasbah he demanded to see the Kaid, and, after various parleyings with the guards and negroes who haunted the winding ways of the gloomy place, he was introduced to the Basha's presence. The Basha received him in a room so dark that he could but dimly see his face. Ben Aboo was stretched on a carpet, in much the position of a dog with his muzzle on his forepaws.
“Welcome,” he said gruffly, and without changing his own unceremonious posture, he gave the Mahdi a signal to sit.
The Mahdi did not sit. “Ben Aboo,” he said in a voice that was half choked with anger, “I have come again on an errand of mercy, and woe to you if you send me away unsatisfied.”
Ben Aboo lay silent and gloomy for a moment, and then said with a growl, “What is it now?”
“Where is the daughter of Ben Oliel?” said the Mahdi.
With a gesture of protestation the Basha waved one of the hands on which his dusky muzzle had rested.
“Ah, do not lie to me,” cried the Mahdi. “I know where she is—she is in prison. And for what? For no fault but love of her father, and no crime but fidelity to her faith. She has sacrificed the one and abandoned the other. Is that not enough for you, Ben Aboo? Set her free.”
The Basha listened at first with a look of bewilderment, and some half-dozen armed attendants at the farther end of the room shuffled about in their consternation. At length Ben Aboo raised his head, and said with an air of mock inquiry, “Ya Allah! who is this infidel?”
Then, changing his tone suddenly, he cried, “Sir, I know who you are! You come to me on this sham errand about the girl, but that is not your purpose, Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! What fool said you were a spy of the Sultan? Abd er-Rahman is here—my guest and protector. You are a spy of his enemies, and a revolutionary, come hither to ruin our religion and our State. The penalty for such as you is death, and by Allah you shall die!”
Saying this, he so wrought upon his indignation, that in spite of his superstitious fears, and the awe in which he stood of the Mahdi, he half deceived himself, and deceived his attendants entirely. But the Mahdi took a step nearer and looked straight into his face, and said—
“Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God; you are a fool. You talk of putting me to death. You dare not and you cannot do it.”
“Why not?” cried Ben Aboo, with a thrill of voice that was like a swagger. “What's to hinder me? I could do it at this moment, and no man need know.”
“Basha,” said the Mahdi, “do you think you are talking to a child? Do you think that when I came here my visit was not known to others than ourselves outside? Do you think there are not some who are waiting for my return? And do you think, too,” he cried, lifting one hand and his voice together, “that my Master in heaven would not see and know it on an errand of mercy His servant perished? Ben Aboo, ask pardon of God, I say; you are a fool.”
The Basha's face became black and swelled with rage. But he was cowed. He hesitated a moment in silence, and then said with an air of braggadocio—
“And what if I do not liberate the girl?”
“Then,” said the Mahdi, “if any evil befalls her the consequences shall be on your head.”
“What consequences?” said the Basha.
“Worse consequences than you expect or dream,” said the Mahdi.
“What consequences?” said the Basha again.
“No matter,” said the Mahdi. “You are walking in darkness, and do not know where you are going.”
“What consequences?” the Basha cried once more.
“That is God's secret,” said the Mahdi.
Ben Aboo began to laugh. “Light the infidel out of the Kasbah,” he shouted to his people.
“Enough!” cried the Mahdi. “I have delivered my message. Now woe to you, Ben Aboo! A second time I have come to you as a witness, but I will come no more. Fill up the measure of your iniquity. Keep the girl in prison. Give her to the Sultan. But know that for all these things your reward awaits you. Your time is near. You will die with a pale face. The sword will reach to your soul.”
Then taking yet another step nearer, until he stood over the Basha where he lay on the ground, he cried with sudden passion, “This is the last word that will pass between you and me. So part we now for ever, Ben Aboo—I to the work that waits for me, and you to shame and contempt, and death and hell.”
Saying this, he made a downward sweep of his open hand over the place where the Basha lay, and Ben Aboo shrank under it as a worm shrinks under a blow. Then with head erect he went out unhindered.
But he was not yet done. In the garden of the palace, as he passed through it to the street, he stood a moment in the darkness under the stars before the chamber where he knew the Sultan lay, and cried, “Abd er-Rahman! Abd er-Rahman! slave of the Merciful! Listen: I hear the sound of the trumpet and the alarum of war. My heart makes a noise in me for my country, but the day of her tribulation is near. Woe to you, Abd er-Rahman! You have filled up the measure of your fathers. Woe to you, slave of the Compassionate!”
The Sultan heard him, and so did the Ministers of State; the women of the hareem heard him, and so did the civil guards and the soldiers. But his voice and his message came over them with the terror of a ghostly thing, and no man raised a hand to stop him.
“The Mahdi,” they whispered with awe, and fell back when he approached.
The streets were quiet as he left the Kasbah. The rabble of mountaineers of Aissawa were gone. Hooded Talebs, with prayer-mats under their arms, were picking their way in the gloom from the various mosques; and from these there came out into the streets the plash of water in the porticos and the low drone of singing voices behind the screens.
The Mahdi lodged that night in the quarter of the enclosure called the M'Salla, and there a slave woman of Ben Aboo's came to him in secret. It was Fatimah, and she told him much of her late master, whom she had visited by stealth, and just left in great trouble and in madness; also of her dead mistress, Ruth who was like rose-perfume in her memory, as well as of Naomi, their daughter, and all her sufferings. In spasms, in gasps, without sequence and without order, she told her story; but he listened to her with emotion while the agitated black face was before him, and when it was gone he tramped the dark house in the dead of night, a silent man, with tender thoughts of the sweet girl who was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Kasbah, and of her stricken father, who supposed that she was living in luxury in the palace of his enemy while he himself lay sick in the poor hut which had been their home. These false notions, which were at once the seed and the fruit of Israel's madness, should at least be dispelled. Let come what would, the man should neither live nor die in such bitterness of cruel error.
The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning, and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet, the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter, but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf. Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place, and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.
“O Tetuan,” thought the Mahdi, “how soon will your streets be uprooted and your sanctuaries destroyed!”
The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled and still saddled, were up and feeding.
The Mahdi found Israel ben Oliel in the hut at Semsa. So poor a place he had not seen in all his wanderings through that abject land. Its walls were of clay that was bulged and cracked, and its roof was of rushes, which lay over it like sea-wreck on a broken barrel. Israel was in his right mind. He was sitting by the door of his house, with a dejected air, a hopeless look, but the slow sad eyes of reason. His clothing was one worn and torn kaftan; his feet were shoeless, and his head was bare. But so grand a head the Mahdi thought he had never beheld before. Not until then had he truly seen him, for the poverty and misery that sat on him only made his face stand out the clearer. It was the face of a man who for good or ill, for struggle or submission, had walked and wrestled with God.
With salutations, barely returned to him, the Mahdi sat down beside Israel at a little distance. He began to speak to him in a tender way, telling him who he was, and where they had met before, and why he came, and whither he was going. And Israel listened to him at first with a brave show of composure as if the very heart of the man were a frozen clod, whereby his eyes and the muscles of his face and even the nerves of his fingers were also frozen.
Then the Mahdi spoke of Naomi, and Israel made a slow shake of the head. He told him what had happened to her when her father was taken to prison, and Israel listened with a great outward calmness. After that he described the girl's journey in the hope of taking food to him, and how she fell into the hands of Habeebah; and then he saw by Israel's face that the affection of the father was tearing his old heart woefully. At last he recited the incidents of her cruel trial, and how she had yielded at length, knowing nothing of religion, being only a child, seeing her father in everything and thinking to save his life, though she herself must see him no more (for all this he had gathered from Fatimah), and then the great thaw came to Israel, and his fingers trembled, and his face twitched, and the hot tears rained down his cheeks.
“My poor darling!” he muttered in a trembling undertone, and then he asked in a faltering voice where she was at that time.
The Mahdi told him that she was back in prison, for rebelling against the fortune intended for her—that of becoming a concubine of the Sultan.
“My brave girl!” he muttered, and then his face shone with a new light that was both pride and pain.
He lifted his eyes as if he could see her, and his voice as if she could hear: “Forgive me, Naomi! Forgive me, my poor child! Your weak old father; forgive him, my brave, brave daughter!”
This was as much as the Mahdi could bear; and when Israel turned to him, and said in almost a childish tone, “I suppose there is no help for it now, sir. I meant to take her to England—to my poor mother's home, but—”
“And so you shall, as sure as the Lord lives,” said the Mahdi, rising to his feet, with the resolve that a plan for Naomi's rescue which he had thought of again and again, and more than once rejected, which had clamoured at the door of his heart, and been turned away as a barbarous impulse, should at length be carried into effect.