Stories by English Authors: Africa Part 11

"But we cannot pay him. He must let us have some. If not--" and Gregorio raised threatening.

His wife smiled sadly and kissed him.

"You will not frighten Amos, my love. When I told him the child had been ill, he only laughed."

"When was that?"

"Yesterday."

"Then he had been here?"

"He came last night to ask for his money. I told him we had none, and he laughed and said we must get some. He told me I might get some if I cared to. He said I could make, oh, so much!"

Gregorio scowled savagely. "The filthy Jew! he said that? Never, never, never!"

"But we must get some money," the woman sobbed, "if only for our son's sake, Gregorio. But not that way?"

"No, not that way," he replied, savagely.

"When shall you go to him?"

"Now."

And taking up his hat he rushed into the street. He was terribly angry, not so much at the purport of the Jew's speech as at the man who made it. He loathed the Jews, and felt insulted when spoken to by one; it was a terrible matter to ask this man for help, but it was intolerable that his wife should suffer insult. And yet the child must be fed. Yes, she had said that, and it was true. They must make sacrifices for the child.

He soon reached the Jew's house, and was shown by a richly clad servant into the room where Amos sat. Amos was an old man, tall and strong, with a long bushy beard, in which his fingers continually played; and his eyes were sharp and brilliant and restless, a strange contrast to his stately bearing and measured movements. He rose from his cus.h.i.+ons as Gregorio entered, and saluted him courteously, motioning him to a seat.

Then, having resettled himself, he clapped his hands together smartly and ordered the servant who answered the summons to bring in coffee and pipes.

Gregorio was rather overawed at the luxury he saw around him, and he felt the stern-looking, polite old man would be a difficult person to deal with. As he puffed at his tube he considered carefully what words he should use.

For some time neither spoke, but Amos was the first to break the silence.

"You heard I was at your house last night, and so have come to pay me?"

"Yes, I heard you were at my house and that you wanted to be paid. You are a rich man, and I am poor."

"Nay, I am not rich; they lie who say I am rich."

"It is twenty pounds I owe you, is it not?"

"Yes, twenty pounds. It is a large sum, and I have dealt generously with you. I am now in need of it myself."

"I am a poor man."

"You have not the money, eh, my friend?"

"I have not the money. But I will pay you if you will lend me some more.

I shall be successful now; only twenty pounds more."

Amos appeared unmoved at the tremor in Gregorio's voice. His eyes rested coldly on the face of his client, while the unfortunate Greek continued to speak rapidly of his troubles and hopes. He smiled sarcastically as Gregorio spoke of the certainty of making his fortune at Benhur, and remained quite unmoved at the story of the sufferings of a woman and child from hunger and want.

"Your wife is beautiful," was all he answered when Gregorio paused for a moment. At these words, however, he half rose from his place and clinched his hands savagely. But he sank back again with the remembrance that a show of temper would not advance his cause.

"Very beautiful," he answered, chokingly; "would you see her starve?"

"She is not my wife," said Amos, quietly. Then he continued slowly, pausing at intervals to puff out a cloud of smoke from his mouth:

"You have owed me this money a long time. I want it, and I will have it.

Even in Egypt there is law. You do not like us Jews, but the law will protect me as long as I am rich enough to buy justice. In three days you will pay me this money. I have been generous to you; now I will be generous no longer. If I am not paid I will take measures to recover my loss. You will sleep in the streets like the Arabs, my friend; but the weather is warm. It is early summer, so you will scarcely feel the exposure. In three days you will come and pay me."

"But how am I to get the money? If you would lend me only a few pounds I would repay you all I owe."

"Already you owe me more than you can pay. You can make money. You are married. These Christian women are worse than the Arabs; do I not see them as I come home in the evening from my business? It is not right to borrow and not repay. I need my money. How can I have my coffee and my pipe unless I have money?"

Gregorio listened with growing anger, and finally rose from his seat and shook his fist in the old man's face.

"You shall be paid," he shouted, "you shall be paid!"

"Anger is useless, my friend."

And as Gregorio left the house Amos smiled and stroked his beard.

"Truly," he thought, "these Christians hate us, but we have them in our power. It is pleasant to be hated and yet to know that it is to us they must cringe when they are in need; and it is very pleasant to refuse. My friend Gregorio is not happy now that he is struggling in my grasp."

As for Gregorio, he wandered away toward the harbour, kicking savagely at the refuse scattered along the pavement. He did not know how to set about earning the requisite sum. It was no good applying to the hotels or tourist agencies, for there were few visitors in the city and dragomen were therefore not needed.

His friends were too poor to help him, and the consul was unable to do much for him, there were so many poor Greeks who wanted help. Meanwhile there was no food at home and no drink; even the necessaries of life were lacking.

On arriving at his home he found his wife and child huddled in a corner crying for food. They ran toward him as he entered, but the hope in their faces quickly faded at the sight of him.

"It's no good," Gregorio growled; "Amos refuses to advance a piastre and says I must pay all I owe in three days."

"It is impossible to sleep when one is hungry," said Gregorio that night to his wife, who lay awake, weeping, beside him.

III--OF FAILURE AND A RESOLVE

Gregorio's dreams, when he did sleep, were none of the pleasantest, and when he woke up, from time to time, he heard his wife weeping. In wondering what he should say to comfort her he fell asleep again, and sleeping was worse than lying awake. For in his dreams he saw Xantippe and his child starving and crying for food, and he was unable to help them in any way. He lived over again the long day he had spent tramping the streets of Alexandria searching for work. He saw the few tourists still left in the town fat and happy; he saw the porters of the hotels who had smiled on him pityingly and yet contemptuously; and he woke, after each representation of the crude comedy, hot and yet cold with perspiration, to feel the bed on which he lay shaking under the sobs of his wife.

When at last day dawned Gregorio raised himself with an oath, and swore to find food for his family and work for himself. The terrible debt he owed to Amos he swore should not trouble him, laughing at his wife's remonstrances. With the bright daylight had come a new courage, and, hungry as he was, he felt able not only to satisfy their hunger, but so skilfully to arrange matters that they would never feel hungry again.

Yet is was a terrible ordeal, that half-hour when the family should have sat down to a table laden with food. The poor wife cried, and he had to comfort her tears with promises, unsubstantial nutriment indeed, and they could not satisfy the child, who failed dismally to understand them. Through the green blinds came the noise of life and health and merriment; curses too, sometimes, but only the curses of the well fed, and therefore meaningless. Already the sun fell hot and indomitable on the room, and the atmosphere at their touch became stifling. Gregorio, swallowing his tears, tore out into the street, shouting up the narrow stairway hysterical words of hope.

How long and shadowless the street seemed! Every house had its green blinds closely shut; the wind that stirred the dust of the pavements was hot and biting. Gregorio clinched his hands and strode rapidly onward.

What mattered it to him that behind those green blinds women and men slumbered in comparative comfort? He had a work to do, and by sunset must carry good tidings to his little world. For a time his heart was brave as the dry wind scorched the tear upon his cheek. "Surely," he thought, weaving his thoughts into a fine marching rhythm, "the great G.o.d will help me now, will help me now."

At midday, after he had tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate. The march had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure.

An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe. Calling for a gla.s.s of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried to think. But really logical thinking was impossible. For in spite of the sorrow at his heart, the same bright dreams of wealth and happiness came back to mock him. The piastre he played with became gold, and he felt the cafe contained no luxuries that he might not command to be brought before him. But as the effects of the red wine of Lebanon evaporated he began to take a soberer though still cheerful view of his position. It was only when the waiter carried off his piastre that he suddenly woke to fact and knew himself once more a man with a wife and child starving in Alexandria, an alien city for all its wealthy colony of Greeks. A wave of pity swept over him; not so much for the woman was he sorry, though he loved her too, but for the baby whose future he had planned. He scowled savagely at the inmates of the cafe, who only smiled quietly, for they were used to poor Greeks who had drunk away their last coin, and pushed past them into the street.