The Scapegoat Part 22

"I am here," continued Israel, as calmly as before, "to resign my office."

"Resign your office? Deliver up your seal?" cried Ben Aboo. "Man, man, are you mad?"

"No, Basha, not to-day," said Israel quietly. "I must have been that when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago."

Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible thought. Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, "There is something under all this? What is it? Let me think! Let me think!"

Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, "What does it mean? What does it mean?"

In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way. "Wait!" he cried, looking vainly for help and answer into the faces of his people about him. "Who said that when he was away from Tetuan he went to Fez?

The Sultan was there then. He had just come up from Soos. That's it! I knew it! The man is like all the rest of them. Abd er-Rahman has bought him. Allah! Allah! What have I done that every soul that eats my bread should spy and pry on me?"

Satisfied with this explanation of Israel's conduct, Ben Aboo waited for no further a.s.surance, but fell to a wild outburst of mingled prayers and protests. "O Giver of Good to all! O Creator! It is Abd er-Rahman again.

Ya Allah! Ya Allah! Or else his rapacious satellites--his thieves, his robbers, his cut-throats! That bloated Vizier! That leprous Naib es-Sultan! Oh, I know them. Bismillah! They want to fleece me. They want to squeeze me of my little wealth--my just savings--my hard earnings after my long service. Curse them! Curse their relations! O Merciful! O Compa.s.sionate! They'll call it arrears of taxes. But no, by the beard of my father, no! Not one feels shall they have if I die for it. I'm an old soldier--they shall torture me. Yes, the bastinado, the jellab--but I'll stand firm! Allah! Allah! Bismillah! Why does Abd er-Rahman hate me?

It's because I'm his brother--that's it, that's it! But I've never risen against him. Never, never! I've paid him all! All! I tell you I've paid everything. I've got nothing left. You know it yourself, Israel, you know it."

Thus, in the crawling of his fear he cried with maudlin tears, pleaded and entreated and threatened fumbling meantime the beads of his rosary and tramping nervously to and fro about the patio until he drew up at length, with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, the Sultan.

But, struggling to suppress his contempt, Israel said, speaking as slowly and calmly as at first, "Basha, have no fear; I have not sold myself to Abd er-Rahman. It is true that I was at Fez--but not to see the Sultan. I have never seen him. I am not his spy. He knows nothing of me. I know nothing of him, and what I am doing now is being done for myself alone."

Hearing this, and believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what poor s.h.i.+ft he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and to make believe that they had been no more than a humorous pretence, and that no man would be so simple as to think he had truly meant them. But, after this mockery, he turned to Israel again, and, being relieved of his fears, he fell back to his savage mood once more, without disguise and without shame.

"And pray, sir," said he, with a ghastly smile, "what riches have you gathered that you are at last content to h.o.a.rd no more?"

"None," said Israel shortly.

Ben Aboo laughed l.u.s.tily, and exchanged looks of obvious meaning with Katrina.

"And pray, again," he said, with a curl of the lip, "without office and without riches how may you hope to live?"

"As a poor man among poor men," said Israel, "serving G.o.d and trusting to His mercy."

Again Ben Aboo laughed hoa.r.s.ely, and Katrina joined him, but Israel stood quiet and silent, and gave no sign.

"Serving G.o.d is hard bread," said Ben Aboo.

"Serving the devil is crust!" said Israel.

At that answer, though neither by look nor gesture had Israel pointed it, the face of Ben Aboo became suddenly discoloured and stern.

"Allah! What do you mean?" he cried. "Who are you that you dare wag your insolent tongue at me?"

"I am your scapegoat, Basha," said Israel, with an awful calm--"your scapegoat, who bears your iniquities before the eyes of your people.

Your scapegoat, who sins against them and oppresses them and brings them by bitter tortures to the dust and death. That's what I am, Basha, and have long been, shame upon me! And while I am down yonder in the streets among your people--hated, reviled, despised, spat upon, cut off--you are up here in the Kasbah above them, in honour and comfort and wealth, and the mistaken love of all men."

While Israel said this, Ben Aboo in his fury came down upon him from the opposite side of the patio with a look of a beast of prey. His swarthy cheeks were drawn hard, his little bleared eyes flashed, his heavy nose and thick lips and ma.s.sive jaw quivered visibly, and from under his turban two locks of iron-grey fell like a s.h.a.ggy mane over his ears.

But Israel did not flinch. With a look of quiet majesty, standing face to face with the tyrant, not a foot's length between them, he spoke again and said, "Basha, I do not envy you, but neither will I share your business nor your rewards. I mean to be your scapegoat no more. Here is your seal. It is red with the blood of your unhappy people through these five-and-twenty bad years past. I can carry it no longer. Take it."

In a tempest of wrath Ben Aboo struck the seal out of Israel's hand as he offered it, and the silver rolled and rang on the tiled pavement of the patio.

"Fool!" he cried. "So this is what it is! Allah! In the name of the most merciful G.o.d, who would have believed it? Israel ben Oliel a prophet! A prophet of the poor! O Merciful! O Compa.s.sionate!"

Thus, in his frenzy, pretending to imitate with airs of manifest mockery his outbreak of fear a few minutes before, Ben Aboo raved and raged and lifted his clenched fist to the sky in sham imprecation of G.o.d.

"Who said it was the Sultan?" he cried again. "He was a fool. Abd er-Rahman? No; but Mohammed of Mequinez! Mohammed the Third! That's it!

That's it!"

So saying, and forgetting in his fury what he had said before of Mohammed himself, he laughed wildly, and beat about the patio from side to side like a caged and angry beast.

"And if I am a tyrant," he said in a thick voice, "who made me so? If I oppress the poor, who taught me the way to do it? Whose clever brain devised new means of revenue? Ransoms, promissory notes, bonds, false judgments--what did I know of such things? Who changed the silver dollars at nine ducats apiece? And who bought up the debts of the people that murmured against such robbery? Allah! Allah! Whose crafty head did all this? Why, yours--yours--Israel ben Oliel! By the beard of the Prophet, I swear it!"

Israel stood unmoved, and when these reproaches were hurled at him, he answered calmly and sadly, "G.o.d's ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts. He works His own will, and we are but His ministers. I thought G.o.d's justice had failed, but it has overtaken myself. For what I did long ago of my own free will and intention to oppress the poor, I have suffered and still am suffering."

All this time the Spanish wife of Ben Aboo had sat in the alcove with lips whitening under their crimson patches of paint, beating her fan restlessly on the empty air, and breathing rapid and audible breath. And now, at this last word of Israel, though so sadly spoken, and so solemn in its note of suffering, she broke into a trill of laughter, and said lightly, "Ah! I thought your love of the poor was young. Not yet cut its teeth, poor thing! A babe in swaddling clothes, eh? When was it born?"

"About the time that you were, madam," said Israel, lifting his heavy eyes upon her.

At that her lighter mood gave place to quick anger. "Husband," she cried, turning upon Ben Aboo with the bitterness of reproach, "I hope you now see that I was right about this insolent old man. I told you from the first what would come of him. But no, you would have your own foolish way. It was easy to see that the devil's dues were in him. Yet you would not believe me! You would believe him. Simpleton as you are, you are believing him now! The poor? Fiddle-faddle and fiddlesticks! I tell you again this man is trying to put his foot on your neck. How? Oh, trust him, he's got his own schemes! Look to it, El Arby, look to it!

He'll be master in Tetuan yet!"

Saying this, she had wrought herself up to a pitch of wrath, sometimes laughing wildly, and then speaking in a voice that was like an angry cry. And now, rising to her feet and facing towards the Arab soldiers, who stood aside in silence and wonder, she cried, "Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Christians, fight as you will, follow the Basha as you may, you'll lie in the same bed yet! But where? Under the heels of the Jew!"

A hoa.r.s.e murmur ran from lip to lip among the men, and the ghostly smile came back into the face of Ben Aboo.

"You must be right," he said, "you must be right! Ya Allah! Ya Allah!

This is the dog that I picked out of the mire. I found him a beggar, and I gave him wealth. An impostor, a personator, a cheat, and I gave him place and rank. When he had no home, I housed him, and when he could find no one to serve him, I gave him slaves. I have banished his enemies, and imprisoned those he hated. After his wife had died, and none came near him, and he was left to howk out her grave with his own hands, I gave him prisoners to bury her, and when he was done with them I set them free. All these years I have heaped fortune upon him. Ya Allah! His master! No, but his servant, doing his will at the lifting of his finger. And all for what? For this! For this! For this! Ingrate!" he cried in his thick voice, turning hotly upon Israel again, "if you must give up your seal, why should you do it like a fool? Could you not come to me and say, 'Kaid, I am old and weary; I am rich, and have enough; I have served you long and faithfully; let me rest'--why not? I say, why not?"

Israel answered calmly, "Because it would have been a lie, Basha."

"So it would," cried Ben Aboo sharply, "so it would: you are right--it would have been a lie, an accursed lie! But why must you come to me and say, 'Basha, you are a tyrant, and have made me a tyrant also; you have sucked the blood of your people, and made me to drink it."

"Because it is true, Basha," said Israel.

At that Ben-Aboo stopped suddenly, and his swarthy face grew hideous and awful. Then, pointing with one shaking hand at the farther end of the patio, he said, "There is another thing that is true. It is true that on the other side of that wall there is a prison," and, lifting his voice to a shriek, he added, "you are on the edge of a gulf, Israel ben Oliel.

One step more--"

But just at that moment Israel turned full upon him, face to face, and the threat that he was about to utter seemed to die in his stifling throat. If only he could have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impa.s.sive manner, and that worn countenance so n.o.ble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his pa.s.sion, and a retort upon his words.

And truly it seemed to Israel that against the Basha's story of his ingrat.i.tude he could tell a different tale. This pitiful slave of rage and fear, this thing of rags and patches, this whining, maudlin, shrieking, bleating, barking-creature that hurled reproaches at him, was the master in whose service he had spent his best brain and best blood.

But for the strong hand that he had lent him, but for the cool head wherewith he had guarded him, where would the man be now? In the dungeons of Abd er-Rahman, having gone thither by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that instant--sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here--fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay peris.h.i.+ng in his prisons, and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten back by his cubs.

But what matter? He could silence the Basha with a word; yet why should he speak it? Twenty times he had saved this man, who could neither read nor write nor reckon figures, from the threatened penalties of the Shereefean Court, and he could count them all up to him; yet why should he do so? Through five-and-twenty evil years he had built up this man's house; yet why should he boast of what was done, being done so foully?

He had said his say, and it was enough. This hour of insult and outrage had been written on his forehead, and he must have come to it. Then courage! courage!

"Husband," cried the woman, showing her toothless jaw in a bitter smile to Ben Aboo as he crossed the patio, "you must scour this vermin out of Tetuan!"

"You are right," he answered. "By Allah, you are right! And henceforth I will be served by soldiers, not by scribblers."