The Scapegoat Part 10

"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. Pa.s.s 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.s 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. G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d, for G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed on.

Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all G.o.d'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 G.o.dspeed 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 G.o.d."

"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 G.o.d has washed me with water should not she also be clean?"

"G.o.d 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 G.o.d, will it come to pa.s.s?"

"G.o.d is good," said the Mahdi. "He needs that no man should teach Him pity."

"But I love her," cried Israel, "and I vowed to her mother to guard her.

She is joy of my joy and life of my life. Without her the morning has no freshness and the night no rest. Surely the Lord sees this, and will have mercy?"

The Mahdi held back his tears, and answered, "The Lord sees all. Go your way in trust. Farewell!"

"Farewell!"

CHAPTER XI

ISRAEL'S HOME-COMING

ISRAEL'S return home was an experience at all points the reverse of his going abroad. He had seven dollars in the pocket of his waistband on setting away from Fez, out of the three hundred and more with which he had started from Tetuan. His men had gone on before him and told their story. So the people whom he came upon by the way either ignored him or jeered at him, and not one that on his coming had run to do him honour now stepped aside that he might pa.s.s.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain over which it had pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.termilk 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."