The chair-maker’s hut lay upon the north hillside about half-way between the Meeting-house at one end of the village and the common at the other end. It commanded the valley, had no house near it, and was sheltered from the north wind by the hill-top which rose up behind it a hundred feet or more. No road led to it—only a path up from the green of the village, winding past a gulley and the deep cuts of old rivulets now over grown by grass or bracken. It got the sun abundantly, and it was protected from the full sweep of any storm. It had but two rooms, the floor was of sanded earth, but it had windows on three sides, east, west, and south, and the door looked south. Its furniture was a plank bed, a few shelves, a bench, two chairs, some utensils, a fireplace of stone, a picture of the Virgin and Child, and of a cardinal of the Church of Rome with a red hat—for the chair-maker had been a Roman Catholic, the only one of that communion in Hamley. Had he been a Protestant his vices would have made him anathema, but, being what he was, his fellow-villagers had treated him with kindness.
After the half-day in which he was permitted to make due preparations, lay in store of provisions, and purchase a few sheep and hens, hither came David Claridge. Here, too, came Faith, who was permitted one hour with him before he began his life of willing isolation. Little was said as they made the journey up the hill, driving the sheep before them, four strong lads following with necessities—flour, rice, potatoes, and suchlike.
Arrived, the goods were deposited inside the hut, the lads were dismissed, and David and Faith were left alone. David looked at his watch. They had still a handful of minutes before the parting. These flew fast, and yet, seated inside the door, and looking down at the village which the sun was bathing in the last glowing of evening, they remained silent. Each knew that a great change had come in their hitherto unchanging life, and it was difficult to separate premonition from substantial fact. The present fact did not represent all they felt, though it represented all on which they might speak together now.
Looking round the room, at last Faith said: “Thee has all thee needs, David? Thee is sure?”
He nodded. “I know not yet how little man may need. I have lived in plenty.”
At that moment her eyes rested on the Cloistered House.
“The Earl of Eglington would not call it plenty.” A shade passed over David’s face. “I know not how he would measure. Is his own field so wide?”
“The spread of a peacock’s feather.”
“What does thee know of him?” David asked the question absently.
“I have eyes to see, Davy.” The shadows from that seeing were in her eyes as she spoke, but he did not observe them.
“Thee sees but with half an eye,” she continued. “With both mine I have seen horses and carriages, and tall footmen, and wine and silver, and gilded furniture, and fine pictures, and rolls of new carpet—of Uncle Benn’s best carpets, Davy—and a billiard-table, and much else.”
A cloud slowly gathered over David’s face, and he turned to her with an almost troubled surprise. “Thee has seen these things—and how?”
“One day—thee was in Devon—one of the women was taken ill. They sent for me because the woman asked it. She was a Papist; but she begged that I should go with her to the hospital, as there was no time to send to Heddington for a nurse. She had seen me once in the house of the toll-gate keeper. Ill as she was, I could have laughed, for, as we went in the Earl’s carriage to the hospital-thirty miles it was—she said she felt at home with me, my dress being so like a nun’s. It was then I saw the Cloistered House within and learned what was afoot.”
“In the Earl’s carriage indeed—and the Earl?”
“He was in Ireland, burrowing among those tarnished baubles, his titles, and stripping the Irish Peter to clothe the English Paul.”
“He means to make Hamley his home? From Ireland these furnishings come?”
“So it seems. Henceforth the Cloistered House will have its doors flung wide. London and all the folk of Parliament will flutter along the dunes of Hamley.”
“Then the bailiff will sit yonder within a year, for he is but a starved Irish peer.”
“He lives to-day as though he would be rich tomorrow. He bids for fame and fortune, Davy.”
“‘Tis as though a shirtless man should wear a broadcloth coat over a cotton vest.”
“The world sees only the broadcloth coat. For the rest—”
“For the rest, Faith?”
“They see the man’s face, and—”
His eyes were embarrassed. A thought had flashed into his mind which he considered unworthy, for this girl beside him was little likely to dwell upon the face of a renegade peer, whose living among them was a constant reminder of his father’s apostasy. She was too fine, dwelt in such high spheres, that he could not think of her being touched by the glittering adventures of this daring young member of Parliament, whose book of travels had been published, only to herald his understood determination to have office in the Government, not in due time, but in his own time. What could there be in common between the sophisticated Eglington and this sweet, primitively wholesome Quaker girl?
Faith read what was passing in his mind. She flushed—slowly flushed until her face—and eyes were one soft glow, then she laid a hand upon his arm and said: “Davy, I feel the truth about him—no more. Nothing of him is for thee or me. His ways are not our ways.” She paused, and then said solemnly: “He hath a devil. That I feel. But he hath also a mind, and a cruel will. He will hew a path, or make others hew it for him. He will make or break. Nothing will stand in his way, neither man nor thing, those he loves nor those he hates. He will go on—and to go on, all means, so they be not criminal, will be his. Men will prophesy great things for him—they do so now. But nothing they prophesy, Davy, keeps pace with his resolve.”
“How does thee know these things?”
His question was one of wonder and surprise. He had never before seen in her this sharp discernment and criticism.
“How know I, Davy? I know him by studying thee. What thee is not he is. What he is thee is not.” The last beams of the sun sent a sudden glint of yellow to the green at their feet from the western hills, rising far over and above the lower hills of the village, making a wide ocean of light, at the bottom of which lay the Meeting-house and the Cloistered House, and the Red Mansion with the fruited wall, and all the others, like dwellings at the bottom of a golden sea. David’s eyes were on the distance, and the far-seeing look was in his face which had so deeply impressed Faith in the Meeting-house, by which she had read his future.
“And shall I not also go on?” he asked.
“How far, who can tell?”
There was a plaintive note in her voice—the unavailing and sad protest of the maternal spirit, of the keeper of the nest, who sees the brood fly safely away, looking not back.
“What does thee see for me afar, Faith?” His look was eager.
“The will of God, which shall be done,” she said with a sudden resolution, and stood up. Her hands were lightly clasped before her like those of Titian’s Mater Dolorosa among the Rubens and Tintorettos of the Prado, a lonely figure, whose lot it was to spend her life for others. Even as she already had done; for thrice she had refused marriages suitable and possible to her. In each case she had steeled her heart against loving, that she might be all in all to her sister’s child and to her father. There is no habit so powerful as the habit of care of others. In Faith it came as near being a passion as passion could have a place in her even-flowing blood, under that cool flesh, governed by a heart as fair as the apricot blossoms on the wall in her father’s garden. She had been bitterly hurt in the Meeting-house; as bitterly as is many a woman when her lover has deceived her. David had acknowledged before them all that he had played the flute secretly for years! That he should have played it was nothing; that she should not have shared his secret, and so shared his culpability before them all, was a wound which would take long to heal.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder suddenly with a nervous little motion.
“And the will of God thee shall do to His honour, though thee is outcast to-day.... But, Davy, the music-thee kept it from me.”
He looked up at her steadily; he read what was in her mind.
“I hid it so, because I would not have thy conscience troubled. Thee would go far to smother it for me; and I was not so ungrateful to thee. I did it for good to thee.”
A smile passed across her lips. Never was woman so grateful, never wound so quickly healed. She shook her head sadly at him, and stilling the proud throbbing of her heart, she said:
“But thee played so well, Davy!”
He got up and turned his head away, lest he should laugh outright. Her reasoning—though he was not worldly enough to call it feminine, and though it scarce tallied with her argument—seemed to him quite her own.
“How long have we?” he said over his shoulder. “The sun is yet five minutes up, or more,” she said, a little breathlessly, for she saw his hand inside his coat, and guessed his purpose.
“But thee will not dare to play—thee will not dare,” she said, but more as an invitation than a rebuke. “Speech was denied me here, but not my music. I find no sin in it.”
She eagerly watched him adjust the flute. Suddenly she drew to him the chair from the doorway, and beckoned him to sit down. She sat where she could see the sunset.
The music floated through the room and down the hillside, a searching sweetness.
She kept her face ever on the far hills. It went on and on. At last it stopped. David roused himself, as from a dream. “But it is dark!” he said, startled. “It is past the time thee should be with me. My banishment began at sunset.”
“Are all the sins to be thine?” she asked calmly. She had purposely let him play beyond the time set for their being together.
“Good-night, Davy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I will keep the music for the sin’s remembrance,” she added, and went out into the night.
“England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense, so illustrative of her unregulated virtues. We are living in the first excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at Damascus. We are full of righteous and passionate indignation. ‘Punish—restore the honour of the Christian nations’ is the proud appeal of prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical Muslim city of the East, have suffered death.”
The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall. Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing words.
He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation. Politicians of both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that blank past of Eastern life where there “are no birds in last year’s nest.” If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the clustering sails! So he would move against the tide, and would startle, even if he did not convince.
“Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war,” he continued. “To what good? Would it restore one single life in Damascus? Would it bind one broken heart? Would it give light to one darkened home? Let us have care lest we be called a nation of hypocrites. I will neither support nor oppose the resolution presented; I will content myself with pointing the way to a greater national self-respect.”
Mechanically, a few people who had scarcely apprehended the full force of his remarks began to applaud; but there came cries of “‘Sh! ‘Sh!” and the clapping of hands suddenly stopped. For a moment there was absolute silence, in which the chairman adjusted his glasses and fumbled with the agenda paper in his confusion, scarcely knowing what to do. The speaker had been expected to second the resolution, and had not done so. There was an awkward silence. Then, in a loud whisper, some one said:
“David, David, do thee speak.”
It was the voice of Faith Claridge. Perturbed and anxious, she had come to the meeting with her father. They had not slept for nights, for the last news they had had of Benn Claridge was from the city of Damascus, and they were full of painful apprehensions.
It was the eve of the first day of winter, and David’s banishment was over. Faith had seen David often at a distance—how often had she stood in her window and looked up over the apricot-wall to the chair-maker’s hut on the hill! According to his penalty David had never come to Hamley village, but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working out his punishment. Only the day before the meeting he had read of the massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep overnight. Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and boycott, knowing David’s love for his Uncle Benn.
All that night David paced the hillside in anxiety and agitation, and saw the sun rise upon a new world—a world of freedom, of home-returning, yet a world which, during the past four months, had changed so greatly that it would never seem the same again.
The sun was scarce two hours high when Faith and her father mounted the hill to bring him home again. He had, however, gone to Heddington to learn further news of the massacre. He was thinking of his Uncle Benn-all else could wait. His anxiety was infinitely greater than that of Luke Claridge, for his mind had been disturbed by frequent premonitions; and those sudden calls in his sleep-his uncle’s voice—ever seemed to be waking him at night. He had not meant to speak at the meeting, but the last words of the speaker decided him; he was in a flame of indignation. He heard the voice of Faith whisper over the heads of the people. “David, David, do thee speak.” Turning, he met her eyes, then rose to his feet, came steadily to the platform, and raised a finger towards the chairman.
A great whispering ran through the audience. Very many recognised him, and all had heard of him—the history of his late banishment and self-approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of the platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure. Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation, would give the meeting the new direction which all desired.
Something in the face of the young man, grown thin and very pale during the period of long thought and little food in the lonely and meditative life he had led; something human and mysterious in the strange tale of his one day’s mad doings, fascinated them. They had heard of the liquor he had drunk, of the woman he had kissed at the cross-roads, of the man he had fought, of his discipline and sentence. His clean, shapely figure, and the soft austerity of the neat grey suit he wore, his broad-brimmed hat pushed a little back, showing well a square white forehead—all conspired to send a wave of feeling through the audience, which presently broke into cheering.
Beginning with the usual formality, he said: “I am obliged to differ from nearly every sentiment expressed by the Earl of Eglington, the member for Levizes, who has just taken his seat.”
There was an instant’s pause, the audience cheered, and cries of delight came from all parts of the house. “All good counsel has its sting,” he continued, “but the good counsel of him who has just spoken is a sting in a wound deeper than the skin. The noble Earl has bidden us to be consistent and reasonable. I have risen here to speak for that to which mere consistency and reason may do cruel violence. I am a man of peace, I am the enemy of war—it is my faith and creed; yet I repudiate the principle put forward by the Earl of Eglington, that you shall not clinch your hand for the cause which is your heart’s cause, because, if you smite, the smiting must be paid for.”
He was interrupted by cheers and laughter, for the late event in his own life came to them to point his argument.
“The nation that declines war may be refusing to inflict that just punishment which alone can set the wrong-doers on the better course. It is not the faith of that Society to which I belong to decline correction lest it may seem like war.”
The point went home significantly, and cheering followed. “The high wall of Tibet, a stark refusal to open the door to the wayfarer, I can understand; but, friend”—he turned to the young peer—“friend, I cannot understand a defence of him who opens the door upon terms of mutual hospitality, and then, in the red blood of him who has so contracted, blots out the just terms upon which they have agreed. Is that thy faith, friend?”
The repetition of the word friend was almost like a gibe, though it was not intended as such. There was none present, however, but knew of the defection of the Earl’s father from the Society of Friends, and they chose to interpret the reference to a direct challenge. It was a difficult moment for the young Earl, but he only smiled, and cherished anger in his heart.
For some minutes David spoke with force and power, and he ended with passionate solemnity. His voice rang out: “The smoke of this burning rises to Heaven, the winds that wail over scattered and homeless dust bear a message of God to us. In the name of Mahomet, whose teaching condemns treachery and murder, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who taught that justice which makes for peace, I say it is England’s duty to lay the iron hand of punishment upon this evil city and on the Government in whose orbit it shines with so deathly a light. I fear it is that one of my family and of my humble village lies beaten to death in Damascus. Yet not because of that do I raise my voice here to-day. These many years Benn Claridge carried his life in his hands, and in a good cause it was held like the song of a bird, to be blown from his lips in the day of the Lord. I speak only as an Englishman. I ask you to close your minds against the words of this brilliant politician, who would have you settle a bill of costs written in Christian blood, by a promise to pay, got through a mockery of armed display in those waters on which once looked the eyes of the Captain of our faith. Humanity has been put in the witness-box of the world; let humanity give evidence.”
Women wept. Men waved their hats and cheered; the whole meeting rose to its feet and gave vent to its feelings.
For some moments the tumult lasted, Eglington looking on with face unmoved. As David turned to leave the table, however, he murmured, “Peacemaker! Peacemaker!” and smiled sarcastically.
As the audience resumed their seats, two people were observed making their way to the platform. One was Elder Fairley, leading the way to a tall figure in a black robe covering another coloured robe, and wearing a large white turban. Not seeing the new-comers, the chairman was about to put the resolution; but a protesting hand from John Fairley stopped him, and in a strange silence the two new-comers mounted the platform. David rose and advanced to meet them. There flashed into his mind that this stranger in Eastern garb was Ebn Ezra Bey, the old friend of Benn Claridge, of whom his uncle had spoken and written so much. The same instinct drew Ebn Ezra Bey to him—he saw the uncle’s look in the nephew’s face. In a breathless stillness the Oriental said in perfect English, with a voice monotonously musical:
“I came to thy house and found thee not. I have a message for thee from the land where thine uncle sojourned with me.”
He took from a wallet a piece of paper and passed it to David, adding: “I was thine uncle’s friend. He hath put off his sandals and walketh with bare feet!” David read eagerly.
“It is time to go, Davy,” the paper said. “All that I have is thine. Go to Egypt, and thee shall find it so. Ebn Ezra Bey will bring thee. Trust him as I have done. He is a true man, though the Koran be his faith. They took me from behind, Davy, so that I was spared temptation—I die as I lived, a man of peace. It is too late to think how it might have gone had we met face to face; but the will of God worketh not according to our will. I can write no more. Luke, Faith, and Davy—dear Davy, the night has come, and all’s well. Good morrow, Davy. Can you not hear me call? I have called thee so often of late! Good morrow! Good morrow!... I doff my hat, Davy—at last—to God!”
David’s face whitened. All his visions had been true visions, his dreams true dreams. Brave Benn Claridge had called to him at his door—“Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow!” Had he not heard the knocking and the voice? Now all was made clear. His path lay open before him—a far land called him, his quiet past was infinite leagues away. Already the staff was in his hands and the cross-roads were sinking into the distance behind. He was dimly conscious of the wan, shocked face of Faith in the crowd beneath him, which seemed blurred and swaying, of the bowed head of Luke Claridge, who, standing up, had taken off his hat in the presence of this news of his brother’s death which he saw written in David’s face. David stood for a moment before the great throng, numb and speechless. “It is a message from Damascus,” he said at last, and could say no more.
Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face upon the audience.
“Will you hear me?” he said. “I am an Arab.” “Speak—speak!” came from every side.
“The Turk hath done his evil work in Damascus,” he said. “All the Christians are dead—save one; he hath turned Muslim, and is safe.” His voice had a note of scorn. “It fell sudden and swift like a storm in summer. There were no paths to safety. Soldiers and those who led them shared in the slaying. As he and I who had travelled far together these many years sojourned there in the way of business, I felt the air grow colder, I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, but he would not go. If trouble must come, then he would be with the Christians in their peril. At last he saw with me the truth. He had a plan of escape. There was a Christian weaver with his wife in a far quarter—against my entreaty he went to warn them. The storm broke. He was the first to fall, smitten in ‘that street called Straight.’ I found him soon after. Thus did he speak to me—even in these words: ‘The blood of women and children shed here to-day shall cry from the ground. Unprovoked the host has turned wickedly upon his guest. The storm has been sown, and the whirlwind must be reaped. Out of this evil good shall come. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ These were his last words to me then. As his life ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have brought hither to one”—he turned to David—“whom he loved. At the last he took off his hat, and lay with it in his hands, and died.... I am a Muslim, but the God of pity, of justice, and of right is my God; and in His name be it said that was a crime of Sheitan the accursed.”
In a low voice the chairman put the resolution. The Earl of Eglington voted in its favour.
Walking the hills homeward with Ebn Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and John Fairley, David kept saying over to himself the words of Benn Claridge: “I have called thee so often of late. Good morrow! Good morrow! Good morrow! Can you not hear me call?”
Some months later the following letter came to David Claridge in Cairo from Faith Claridge in Hamley:
David, I write thee from the village and the land of the peoplewhich thou didst once love so well. Does thee love them still?They gave thee sour bread to eat ere thy going, but yet thee didstgrind the flour for the baking. Thee didst frighten all who knewthee with thy doings that mad midsummer time. The tavern, thetheatre, the cross-roads, and the cockpit—was ever such a day!Now, Davy, I must tell of a strange thing. But first, a moment.Thee remembers the man Kimber smitten by thee at the public-house onthat day? What think thee has happened? He followed to London thelass kissed by thee, and besought her to return and marry him. Thisshe refused at first with anger; but afterwards she said that, if inthree years he was of the same mind, and stayed sober and hard-working meanwhile, she would give him an answer, she would consider.Her head was high. She has become maid to a lady of degree, who haswell befriended her.How do I know these things? Even from Jasper Kimber, who, on hisreturn from London, was taken to his bed with fever. Because of thehard blows dealt him by thee, I went to make amends. He welcomedme, and soon opened his whole mind. That mind has generous moments,David, for he took to being thankful for thy knocks.Now for the strange thing I hinted. After visiting Jasper Kimber atHeddington, as I came back over the hill by the path we all tookthat day after the Meeting—Ebn Ezra Bey, my father, Elder Fairley,and thee and me—I drew near the chairmaker’s but where thee livedalone all those sad months. It was late evening; the sun had set.Yet I felt that I must needs go and lay my hand in love upon thedoor of the empty hut which had been ever as thee left it. So Icame down the little path swiftly, and then round the great rock,and up towards the door. But, as I did so, my heart stood still,for I heard voices. The door was open, but I could see no one. Yetthere the voices sounded, one sharp and peevish with anger, theother low and rough. I could not hear what was said. At last, afigure came from the door and went quickly down the hillside. Who,think thee, was it? Even “neighbour Eglington.” I knew the walkand the forward thrust of the head. Inside the hut all was still.I drew near with a kind of fear, but yet I came to the door andlooked in.As I looked into the dusk, my limbs trembled under me, for whoshould be sitting there, a half-finished chair between his knees,but Soolsby the old chair-maker! Yes, it was he. There he satlooking at me with his staring blue eyes and shock of redgrey hair.“Soolsby! Soolsby!” said I, my heart hammering at my breast; forwas not Soolsby dead and buried? His eyes stared at me in fright.“Why do you come?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Is he dead, then?Has harm come to him?”By now I had recovered myself, for it was no ghost I saw, but ahuman being more distraught than was myself. “Do you not know me,Soolsby?” I asked. “You are Mercy Claridge from beyond—beyond andaway,” he answered dazedly. “I am Faith Claridge, Soolsby,”answered I. He started, peered forward at me, and for a moment hedid not speak; then the fear went from his face. “Ay, FaithClaridge, as I said,” he answered, with apparent understanding, hisstark mood passing. “No, thee said Mercy Claridge, Soolsby,” saidI, “and she has been asleep these many years.” “Ay, she has sleptsoundly, thanks be to God!” he replied, and crossed himself. “Whyshould thee call me by her name?” I inquired. “Ay, is not her tombin the churchyard?” he answered, and added quickly, “Luke Claridgeand I are of an age to a day—which, think you, will go first?”He stopped weaving, and peered over at me with his staring blueeyes, and I felt a sudden quickening of the heart. For, at thequestion, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave mein the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me tothe marrow. I saw myself alone—thee in Egypt and I here, and noneof our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, thelast of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near toanger, that he should link his name and fate with that of LukeClaridge: “Which of ye two goes first is God’s will, and accordingto His wisdom. Which, think thee,” added I—and now I cannotforgive myself for saying it—“which, think thee, would do leastharm in going?” “I know which would do most good,” he answered,with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindlyat me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a littlemad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. “Theehas had a visitor,” I said to him presently. He laughed in asnarling way that made me shrink, and answered: “He wanted this andhe wanted that—his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and hewould have it, because it pleased him to have it—like his fatherbefore him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he mustnot have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, asthough it was a bird of paradise. And when he’s seen it fall atlast, he’ll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may getto its tree-top again—if it can—if it can—if it can, my lord!That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he iswho left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby’s palace,his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies.He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is itastronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is theEglington mind, which let God A’mighty make it as a favour. Hewould have old Soolsby’s palace for his spy-glass, would he then?It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here.I had but come back in time—a day later, and he would have sat hereand seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession’s ninepoints were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here hestormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with mywork. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn’t sell it for allhis puffball lordship might offer. Isn’t the house of the snail asmuch to him as the turtle’s shell to the turtle? I’ll have noupstart spilling his chemicals here, or devilling the stars from aseat on my roof.” “Last autumn,” said I, “David Claridge was housedhere. Thy palace was a prison then.” “I know well of that.Haven’t I found his records here? And do you think his makeshiftlordship did not remind me?” “Records? What records, Soolsby?”asked I, most curious. “Writings of his thoughts which he forgot—food for mind and body left in the cupboard.” “Give them to me uponthis instant, Soolsby,” said I. “All but one,” said he, “and thatis my own, for it was his mind upon Soolsby the drunken chair-maker.God save him from the heathen sword that slew his uncle. Two bettermen never sat upon a chair!” He placed the papers in my hand, allsave that one which spoke of him. Ah, David, what with the fluteand the pen, banishment was no pain to thee!... He placed thepapers, save that one, in my hands, and I, womanlike, asked againfor all. “Some day,” said he, “come, and I will read it to you.Nay, I will give you a taste of it now,” he added, as he broughtforth the writing. “Thus it reads.”Here are thy words, Davy. What think thee of them now?“As I dwell in this house I know Soolsby as I never knew him when helived, and though, up here, I spent many an hour with him. Menleave their impressions on all around them. The walls which havefelt their look and their breath, the floor which has taken theirfootsteps, the chairs in which they have sat, have something oftheir presence. I feel Soolsby here at times so sharply that itwould seem he came again and was in this room, though he is dead andgone. I ask him how it came he lived here alone; how it came thathe made chairs, he, with brains enough to build great houses orgreat bridges; how it was that drink and he were such friends; andhow he, a Catholic, lived here among us Quakers, so singular,uncompanionable, and severe. I think it true, and sadly true, thata man with a vice which he is able to satisfy easily and habitually,even as another satisfies a virtue, may give up the wider actions ofthe world and the possibilities of his life for the pleasure whichhis one vice gives him, and neither miss nor desire those greaterchances of virtue or ambition which he has lost. The simplicity ofa vice may be as real as the simplicity of a virtue.”Ah, David, David, I know not what to think of those strange words;but old Soolsby seemed well to understand thee, and he called thee“a first-best gentleman.” Is my story long? Well, it was sostrange, and it fixed itself upon my mind so deeply, and thywritings at the hut have been so much in my hands and in my mind,that I have put it all down here. When I asked Soolsby how it camehe had been rumoured dead, he said that he himself had been thecause of it; but for what purpose he would not say, save that he wasgoing a long voyage, and had made up his mind to return no more. “Ihad a friend,” he said, “and I was set to go and see that friendagain.... But the years go on, and friends have an end. Lifespills faster than the years,” he said. And he would say no more,but would walk with me even to my father’s door. “May the BlessedVirgin and all the Saints be with you,” he said at parting, “if youwill have a blessing from them. And tell him who is beyond and awayin Egypt that old Soolsby’s busy making a chair for him to sit inwhen the scarlet cloth is spread, and the East and West come tosalaam before him. Tell him the old man says his fluting will beheard.”And now, David, I have told thee all, nearly. Remains to say thatthy one letter did our hearts good. My father reads it over andover, and shakes his head sadly, for, truth is, he has a fear thatthe world may lay its hand upon thee. One thing I do observe, hisheart is hard set against Lord Eglington. In degree it has everbeen so; but now it is like a constant frown upon his forehead. Isee him at his window looking out towards the Cloistered House; andif our neighbour comes forth, perhaps upon his hunter, or now in hiscart, or again with his dogs, he draws his hat down upon his eyesand whispers to himself. I think he is ever setting thee offagainst Lord Eglington; and that is foolish, for Eglington is but aman of the earth earthy. His is the soul of the adventurer.Now what more to be set down? I must ask thee how is thy friend EbnEzra Bey? I am glad thee did find all he said was true, and that inDamascus thee was able to set a mark by my uncle’s grave. But thatthe Prince Pasha of Egypt has set up a claim against my uncle’sproperty is evil news; though, thanks be to God, as my father says,we have enough to keep us fed and clothed and housed. But do theekeep enough of thy inheritance to bring thee safe home again tothose who love thee. England is ever grey, Davy, but without theeit is grizzled—all one “Quaker drab,” as says the Philistine. Butit is a comely and a good land, and here we wait for thee.In love and remembrance.I am thy mother’s sister, thy most loving friend.FAITH.
David received this letter as he was mounting a huge white Syrian donkey to ride to the Mokattam Hills, which rise sharply behind Cairo, burning and lonely and large. The cities of the dead Khalifas and Mamelukes separated them from the living city where the fellah toiled, and Arab, Bedouin, Copt strove together to intercept the fruits of his toiling, as it passed in the form of taxes to the Palace of the Prince Pasha; while in the dark corners crouched, waiting, the cormorant usurers—Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians, a hideous salvage corps, who saved the house of a man that they might at last walk off with his shirt and the cloth under which he was carried to his grave. In a thousand narrow streets and lanes, in the warm glow of the bazaars, in earth-damp huts, by blistering quays, on the myriad ghiassas on the river, from long before sunrise till the sunset-gun boomed from the citadel rising beside the great mosque whose pinnacles seem to touch the blue, the slaves of the city of Prince Kaid ground out their lives like corn between the millstones.
David had been long enough in Egypt to know what sort of toiling it was. A man’s labour was not his own. The fellah gave labour and taxes and backsheesh and life to the State, and the long line of tyrants above him, under the sting of the kourbash; the high officials gave backsheesh to the Prince Pasha, or to his Mouffetish, or to his Chief Eunuch, or to his barber, or to some slave who had his ear.
But all the time the bright, unclouded sun looked down on a smiling land, and in Cairo streets the din of the hammers, the voices of the boys driving heavily laden donkeys, the call of the camel-drivers leading their caravans into the great squares, the clang of the brasses of the sherbet-sellers, the song of the vendor of sweetmeats, the drone of the merchant praising his wares, went on amid scenes of wealth and luxury, and the city glowed with colour and gleamed with light. Dark faces grinned over the steaming pot at the door of the cafes, idlers on the benches smoked hasheesh, female street-dancers bared their faces shamelessly to the men, and indolent musicians beat on their tiny drums, and sang the song of “O Seyyid,” or of “Antar”; and the reciter gave his sing-song tale from a bench above his fellows. Here a devout Muslim, indifferent to the presence of strangers, turned his face to the East, touched his forehead to the ground, and said his prayers. There, hung to a tree by a deserted mosque near by, the body of one who was with them all an hour before, and who had paid the penalty for some real or imaginary crime; while his fellows blessed Allah that the storm had passed them by. Guilt or innocence did not weigh with them; and the dead criminal, if such he were, who had drunk his glass of water and prayed to Allah, was, in their sight, only fortunate and not disgraced, and had “gone to the bosom of Allah.” Now the Muezzin from a minaret called to prayer, and the fellah in his cotton shirt and yelek heard, laid his load aside, and yielded himself to his one dear illusion, which would enable him to meet with apathy his end—it might be to-morrow!—and go forth to that plenteous heaven where wives without number awaited him, where fields would yield harvests without labour, where rich food in gold dishes would be ever at his hand. This was his faith.
David had now been in the country six months, rapidly perfecting his knowledge of Arabic, speaking it always to his servant Mahommed Hassan, whom he had picked from the streets. Ebn Ezra Bey had gone upon his own business to Fazougli, the tropical Siberia of Egypt, to liberate, by order of Prince Kaid,—and at a high price—a relative banished there. David had not yet been fortunate with his own business—the settlement of his Uncle Benn’s estate—though the last stages of negotiation with the Prince Pasha seemed to have been reached. When he had brought the influence of the British Consulate to bear, promises were made, doors were opened wide, and Pasha and Bey offered him coffee and talked to him sympathetically. They had respect for him more than for most Franks, because the Prince Pasha had honoured him with especial favour. Perhaps because David wore his hat always and the long coat with high collar like a Turk, or because Prince Kaid was an acute judge of human nature, and also because honesty was a thing he greatly desired—in others—and never found near his own person; however it was, he had set David high in his esteem at once. This esteem gave greater certainty that any backsheesh coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted through many hands on its way to himself. Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid had scarcely even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within the past few years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to Egypt and had made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river.
David’s donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets of the Moosky. Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at him with furtive interest. A foreigner of this character they had never before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a passport to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian he believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He was more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.
From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith’s letter again, his back against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days, he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava stream of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green plains, stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal and mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a long line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out to a point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand. Here, enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had built, the stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the glow of rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of knowledge, will by knowledge prevail; that: