The Scapegoat Part 25

And truly, if at any weaker moment he had been minded to repine for the loss of his former poor greatness, or to fail of heart in pursuit of his new calling, for which heavier hands were better fit, he had always present with him two bulwarks of his purpose and sheet-anchors of his hope. He was reminded of the one as often as in the daytime he climbed the hillside above his little dwelling and saw the white town lying far away under its gauzy canopy of mist, and whenever in the night the town lamps sent their pale sheet of light into the dark sky.

"They are yonder," he would think, "wrangling, contending, fighting, praying, cursing, blessing, and cheating; and I am here, cut off from them by ten deep miles of darkness, in the quiet, the silence, and sweet odour of G.o.d's proper air."

But stronger to sustain him than any memory of the ways of his former life was the recollection of Naomi. G.o.d had given back all her gifts, and what were poverty and hard toil against so great a blessing? They were as dust, they were as ashes, they were what power of the world and riches of gold and silver had been without it. And higher than the joy of Israel's constant remembrance that Naomi had been blind and could now see, and deaf and could now hear, and dumb and could now speak, was the solemn thought that all this was but the sign and symbol of G.o.d's pleasure and a.s.surance to his soul that the lot of the scapegoat had been lifted away.

More satisfying still to the hunger of his heart as a man was his delicious pleasure in Naomi's new-found life. She was like a creature born afresh, a radiant and joyful being newly awakened into a world of strange sights.

But it was not at once that she fell upon this pleasure. What had happened to her was, after all, a simple thing. Born with cataract on the pupils of her eyes, the emotion of the moment at the Kasbah, when her father's life seemed to be once more in danger, had--like a fall or a blow--luxated the lens and left the pupils clear. That was all.

Throughout the day whereon the last of her great gifts came to her, when they were cast out of Tetuan, and while they walked hand in hand through the country until they lit upon their home, she had kept her eyes steadfastly closed. The light terrified her. It penetrated her delicate lids, and gave her pain. When for a moment she lifted her lashes and saw the trees, she put out her hand as if to push them away; and when she saw the sky, she raised her arms as if to hold it off. Everything seemed to touch her eyes. The bars of sunlight seemed to smite them. Not until the falling of darkness did her fears subside and her spirits revive.

Throughout the day that followed she sat constantly in the gloom of the blackest corner of their hut.

But this was only her baptism of light on coming out of a world of darkness, just as her fear of the voices of the earth and air had been her baptism of sound on coming out of a land of silence. Within three days afterwards her terror began to give place to joy; and from that time forward the world was full of wonder to her opened eyes. Then sweet and beautiful, beyond all dreams of fancy, were her amazement and delight in every little thing that lay about her--the gra.s.s, the weeds, the poorest flower that blew, even the rude implements of the house and the common stones that worked up through the mould--all old and familiar to her fingers, but new and strange to her eyes, and marvellous as if an angel out of heaven had dropped them down to her.

For many days after the coming of her sight she continued to recognise everything by touch and sound. Thus one morning early in their life in the cottage, and early also in the day, after Israel had kissed her on the eyelids to awaken her, and she had opened them and gazed up at him as he stooped above her, she looked puzzled for an instant, being still in the mists of sleep, and only when she had closed her eyes again, and put out her hand to touch him, did her face brighten with recognition and her lips utter his name. "My father," she murmured, "my father."

Thus again, the same day, not an hour afterwards, she came running back to the house from the gra.s.s bank in front of it, holding a flower in her hand, and asking a world of hot questions concerning it in her broken, lisping, pretty speech. Why had no one told her that there were flowers that could see? Here was one which while she looked upon it had opened its beautiful eye and laughed at her. "What is it?" she asked; "what is it?"

"A daisy, my child," Israel answered.

"A daisy!" she cried in bewilderment; and during the short hush and quick inspiration that followed she closed her eyes and pa.s.sed her nervous fingers rapidly over the little ring of sprinkled spears, and then said very softly, with head aslant as if ashamed, "Oh, yes, so it is; it is only a daisy."

But to tell of how those first days of sight sped along for Naomi, with what delight of ever-fresh surprise, and joy of new wonder, would be a long task if a beautiful one. They were some miles inside the coast, but from the little hill-top near at hand they could see it clearly; and one day when Naomi had gone so far with her father, she drew up suddenly at his side, and cried in a breathless voice of awe, "The sky! the sky!

Look! It has fallen on to the land."

"That is the sea, my child," said Israel.

"The sea!" she cried, and then she closed her eyes and listened, and then opened them and blushed and said, while her knitted brows smoothed out and her beautiful face looked aside, "So it is--yes, it is the sea."

Throughout that day and the night which followed it the eyes of her mind were entranced by the marvel of that vision, and next morning she mounted the hill alone, to look upon it again; and, being so far, she walked farther and yet farther, wandering on and on, through fields where lavender grew and chamomile blossomed, on and on, as though drawn by the enchantment of the mighty deep that lay sparkling in the sun, until at last she came to the head of a deep gully in the coast. Still the wonder of the waters held her, but another marvel now seized upon her sight. The gully was a lonesome place inhabited by countless sea-birds. From high up in the rocks above, and from far down in the chasm below, from every cleft on every side, they flew out, with white wings and black ones and grey and blue, and sent their voices into the air, until the echoing place seemed to shriek and yell with a deafening clangour.

It was midday when Naomi reached this spot, and she sat there a long hour in fear and consternation. And when she returned to her father, she told him awesome stories of demons that lived in thousands by the sea, and fought in the air and killed each other. "And see!" she cried; "look at this, and this, and this!"

Then Israel glanced at the wrecks she had brought with her of the devilish warfare that she had witnessed and "This," said he, lifting one of them, "is a sea-bird's feather; and this," lifting another, "is a sea-bird's egg; and this," lifting the third, "is a dead sea-bird itself."

Once more Naomi knit her brows in thought, and again she closed her eyes and touched the familiar things wherein her sight had deceived her.

"Ah yes," she said meekly, looking into her father's eye, with a smile, "they are only that after all." And then she said very quietly, as if speaking to herself, "What a long time it is before you learn to see!"

It was partly due to the isolation of her upbringing in the company of Israel that nearly every fresh wonder that encountered her eyes took shapes of supernatural horror or splendour. One early evening, when she had remained out of the house until the day was well-nigh done, she came back in a wild ecstasy to tell of angels that she had just seen in the sky. They were in robes of crimson and scarlet, their wings blazed like fire, they swept across the clouds in mult.i.tudes, and went down behind the world together, pa.s.sing out of the earth through the gates of heaven.

Israel listened to her and said, "That was the sunset my child. Every morning the sun rises and every night it sets."

Then she looked full into his face and blushed. Her shame at her sweet errors sometimes conquered her joy in the new heritage of sight, and Israel heard her whisper to herself and say, "After all, the eyes are deceitful." Vision was life's new language, and she had yet to learn it.

But not for long was her delight in the beautiful things of the world to be damped by any thought of herself. Nay, the best and rarest part of it, the dearest and most delicious throb it brought her, came of herself alone. On another early day Israel took her to the coast, and pushed off with her on the waters in a boat. The air was still, the sea was smooth, the sun was s.h.i.+ning, and save for one white scarf of cloud the sky was blue. They were sailing in a tiny bay that was broken by a little island, which lay in the midst like a ruby in a ring, covered with heather and long stalks of seeding gra.s.s. Through whispering beds of rushes they glided on, and floated over banks of coral where gleaming fishes were at play. Sea-fowl screamed over their heads, as if in anger at their invasion, and under their oars the moss lay in the shallows on the pebbles and great stones. It was a morning of G.o.d's own making, and, for joy of its loveliness no less than of her own bounding life, Naomi rose in the boat and opened her lips and arms to the breeze while it played with the rippling currents of her hair, as if she would drink and embrace it.

At that moment a new and dearer wonder came to her, such as every maiden knows whom G.o.d has made beautiful, yet none remembers the hour when she knew it first. For, tracing with her eyes the shadow of the cliff and of the continent of cloud that sailed double in two seas of blue to where they were broken by the dazzling half-round of the sun's reflected disc on the shadowed quarter of the boat, she leaned over the side of it, and then saw the reflection of another and lovelier vision.

"Father," she cried with alarm, "a face in the water! Look! look!"

"It is your own, my child," said Israel. "Mine!" she cried.

"The reflection of your face," said Israel; "the light and the water make it."

The marvel was hard to understand. There was something ghostly in this thing that was herself and yet not herself, this face that looked up at her and laughed and yet made no voice. She leaned back in the boat and asked Israel if it was still in the water. But when at length she had grasped the mystery, the artlessness of her joy was charming. She was like a child in her delight, and like a woman that was still a child in her unconscious love of her own loveliness. Whenever the boat was at rest she leaned over its bulwark and gazed down into the blue depths.

"How beautiful!" she cried, "how beautiful!"

She clapped her hands and looked again, and there in the still water was the wonder of her dancing eyes. "Oh! how very beautiful!" she cried without lifting her face, and when she saw her lips move as she spoke and her sunny hair fall about her restless head she laughed and laughed again with a heart of glee.

Israel looked on for some moments at this sweet picture, and, for all his sense of the dangers of Naomi's artless joy in her own beauty, he could not find it in his heart to check her. He had borne too long the pain and shame of one who was father of an afflicted child to deny himself this choking rapture of her recovery. "Live on like a child always, little one," he thought; "be a child as long as you can, be a child for ever, my dove, my darling! Never did the world suffer it that I myself should be a child at all."

The artlessness of Naomi increased day by day, and found constantly some new fas.h.i.+on of charming strangeness. All lovely things on the earth seemed to speak to her, and she could talk with the birds and the flowers. Also she would lie down in the gra.s.s and rest like a lamb, with as little shame and with a grace as sweet. Not yet had the great mystery dawned that drops on a girl like an unseen mantle out of the sky, and when it has covered her she is a child no more. Naomi was a child still.

Nay, she was a child a second time, for while she had been blind she had seemed for a little while to become a woman in the awful revelation of her infirmity and isolation. Now she was a weak, patient, blind maiden no longer, but a reckless spirit of joy once again, a restless gleam of human sunlight gathering suns.h.i.+ne into her father's house.

It was fit and beautiful that she who had lived so long without the better part of the gifts of G.o.d should enjoy some of them at length in rare perfection. Her sight was strong and her hearing was keen, but voice was the gift which she had in abundance. So sweet, so full, so deep, so soft a voice as Naomi's came to be, Israel thought he had never heard before. Ruth's voice? Yes, but fraught with inspiration, replete with sparkling life, and pa.s.sionate with the notes of a joyous heart.

All day long Naomi used it. She sang as she rose in the morning, and was still singing when she lay down at night. Wherever people came upon her, they came first upon the sound of her voice. The farmers heard it across the fields, and sometimes Israel heard it from over the hill by their hut. Often she seemed to them like a bird that is hidden in a tree, and only known to be there by the outbursts of its song.

Fatimah's ditties were still her delight. Some of them fell strangely from her pure lips, so nearly did they border on the dangerous. But her favourite song was still her mother's:--

Oh, come and claim thine own, Oh, come and take thy throne, Reign ever and alone Reign glorious, golden Love.

Into these words, as her voice ripened, she seemed to pour a deeper fervour. She was as innocent as a child of their meaning, but it was almost as if she were fulfilling in some way a law of her nature as a maid and drifting blindly towards the dawn of Love. Never did she think of Love, but it was just as if Love were always thinking of her; it was even as if the spirit of Love were hovering over her constantly, and she were walking in the way of its outstretched wings.

Israel saw this, and it set him to chasing day-dreams that were like the drawing up of a curtain. A beautiful phantom of Naomi's future would rise up before him. Love had come to her. The great mystery! the rapture, the blissful wonder, the dear, secret, delicious palpitating joy. He knew it must come some day--perhaps to day, perhaps to-morrow.

And when it came it would be like a sixth sense.

In quieter moments--generally at night, when he would take a candle and look at her where she lay asleep--Israel would carry his dreams into Naomi's future one stage farther, and see her in the first dawn of young motherhood. Her delicate face of pink an cream; her glance of pride and joy and yearning, an then the thrill of the little spreading red fingers fastening on her white bosom--oh, what a glimpse was there revealed to him!

But struggle as he would to find pleasure in these phantoms, he could not help but feel pain from them also. They had a perilous fascination for him, but he grudged them to Naomi. He thought he could have given his immortal soul to her, but these shadows he could not give. That was his poor tribute to human selfishness; his last tender, jealous frailty as a father. He dreaded the coming of that time when another--some other yet unseen--should come before him, and he should lose the daughter that was now his own.

Sometimes the memory of their old troubles in Tetuan seemed to cross like a thundercloud the azure of Naomi's sky, but at the next hour it was gone. The world was too full of marvels for any enduring sense but wonder. Once she awoke from sleep in terror, and told Israel of something which she believed to have happened to her in the night. She had been carried away from him--she could not say when--and she knew no more until she found herself in a great patio, paved and wailed with tiles. Men were standing together there in red peaked caps and flowing white kaftans. And before them all was one old man in garments that were of the colour of the afternoon sun, with sleeves like the mouths of bells, a curling silver knife at his waistband, and little leather bags hung by yellow cords about his neck. Beside this man there was a woman of a laughing cruel face; and she herself, Naomi--alone her father being nowhere near--stood in the midst with all eyes upon her. What happened next she did not know, for blank darkness fell upon everything, and in that interval they who had taken her away must have brought her back.

For when she opened her eyes she was in her own bed, and the things of their little home were about her, and her father's eyes were looking down at her, and his lips were kissing her, and the sun was s.h.i.+ning outside, and the birds were singing, and the long gra.s.s was whispering in the breeze, and it was the same as if she had been asleep during the night and was just awakening in the morning.

"It was a dream, my child," said Israel, thinking only with how vivid a sense her eyes had gathered up in that instant of first sight the picture of that day at the Kasbah.

"A dream!" she cried; "no, no! I _saw_ it!"

Hitherto her dreams had been blind ones, and if she dreamt of her own people it had not been of their faces, but of the touch of their hands or the sound of their voices. By one of these she had always known them, and sometimes it had been her mother's arms that had been about her, and sometimes her father's lips that had pressed her forehead, and sometimes Ali's voice that had rung in her ears.

Israel smoothed her hair and calmed her fears, but thinking both of her dream and of her artless sayings, he said in his heart, "She is a child, a child born into life as a maid, and without the strength of a child's weakness. Oh! great is the wisdom which orders it so that we come into the world as babes."

Thus realising Naomi's childishness, Israel kept close guard and watch upon her afterwards. But if she was a gleam of sunlight in his lonely dwelling, like sunlight she came and went in it, and one day he found her near to the track leading up to the fondak in talk with a pa.s.sing traveller by the way, whom he recognised for the grossest profligate out of Tetuan. Unveiled, unabashed, with sweet looks of confidence she was gazing full into the man's gross face, answering his evil questions with the artless simplicity of innocence. At one bound Israel was between them; and in a moment he had torn Naomi away. And that night, while she wept out her very heart at the first anger that her father had shown her, Israel himself, in a new terror of his soul, was pouring out a new pet.i.tion to G.o.d. "O Lord, my G.o.d," he cried, "when she was blind and dumb and deaf she was a thing apart, she was a child in no peril from herself for Thy hand did guide her, and in none from the world, for no man dared outrage her infirmity. But now she is a maid, and her dangers are many, for she is beautiful, and the heart of man is evil. Keep me with her always, O Lord, to guard and guide her! Let me not leave her, for she is without knowledge of good and evil. Spare me a little while longer, though I am stricken in years. For her sake spare me, Oh Lord--it is the last of my prayers--the last, O Lord, the last--for her sake spare me!"

G.o.d did not hear the prayer of Israel. Next morning a guard of soldiers came out from Tetuan and took him prisoner in the name of the Kaid. The release of the poor followers of Absalam out of the prison at Shawan had become known by the blind grat.i.tude of one of them, who, hastening to Israel's house in the Mellah, had flung himself down on his face before it.

CHAPTER XXI