The Prince of India; Or, Why Constantinople Fell Volume I Part 11

The cloisters, seen from the square, were open colonnades. Seven minarets, belted in red, blue and yellow, arose in columnar relief against the sky and the mountains in the south. A gravelled plot received from the cloisters; next that, toward the centre, was a narrow pavement of rough stone in transverse extension down a shallow step to another gravelled plot; then another pavement wider than the first, and ending, like it, in a downward step; after which there was a third sanded plot, and then a third pavement defined by gilded posts upholding a continuous row of lamps, ready for lighting at the going down of the sun. The last pavement was of gray granite polished mirror-like by the friction of millions of bare feet; and upon it, like the pedestal of a monument upon a plinth, rested the base of the Holy House, a structure of gla.s.sy white marble about two feet in height, with a bench of sharp inclination from the top. At intervals it was studded with ma.s.sive bra.s.s rings. Upon the base the Kaaba rose, an oblong cube forty feet tall, eighteen paces lengthwise, and fourteen in breadth, shrouded all in black silk wholly unrelieved, except by one broad band of the appearance of gold, and inscriptions from the Koran, of a like appearance, wrought in boldest lettering. The freshness of the great gloomy curtain told how quickly the gift of the Sultan had been made available, and that whatever else might betide him, the young Emir was already happily discharged of his trust.

Of the details, the only one the Jew actually coupled with a thought was the Kaaba. A hundred millions of human beings pray five times every day, their faces turned to this funereal object! The idea, though commonplace, called up that other always in waiting with him. In a s.p.a.ce too brief for the formulation of words, he felt the Arbiters.h.i.+p of his dreams blow away. The work of the founder of Islam was too well done and now too far gone to be disturbed, except with the sanction of G.o.d. Had he the sanction? A writhing of the soul, accompanied with a glare, like lightning, and followed, like lightning, by an engulfing darkness, wrung his features, and instinctively he covered them with his hands. The guide saw the action, and misjudged it.

"Let us not be in haste," he said. "Others before you have found the House at first sight blinding. Blessed be Allah!"

The commiseration affected the Prince strangely. The darkness, under pressure of his hands upon the eyeb.a.l.l.s, gave place to an atmosphere of roseate light, in the fulness of which he saw the House of G.o.d projected by Solomon and rebuilt by Herod. The realism of the apparition was absolute, and comparison unavoidable. That he, familiar with the glory of the conception of the Israelite, should be thought blinded by this _Beit Allah_ of the Arab, so without grace of form or lines, so primitive and expressionless, so palpably uninspired by taste, or genius, or the Deity it was designed to honor, restored him at once: indeed, in the succeeding reaction, he found it difficult to keep down resentment.

Dropping his hands, he took another survey of the shrouded pile, and swept all the square under eye.

He beheld a crowd of devotees at the northeast corner of the House, and over their heads two small open structures which, from descriptions often heard, he recognized as praying places. A stream of wors.h.i.+ppers was circling around the marble base of the Most Holy, some walking, others trotting; these, arriving at the northeast corner, halted--the Black Stone was there! A babel of voices kept the echoes of the enclosure in unremitting exercise. The view taken, the Jew said, calmly:

"Blessed be Allah! I will go forward."

In his heart he longed to be in Constantinople--Islam, it was clear, would lend him no ear; Christendom might be more amenable.

He was carried next through the Gate of the Sons of the Old Woman; thence to the s.p.a.ce in front of the well Zem-Zem; mindful of the prayers and prostrations required at each place, and of the dumb servants who went with him.

The famous well was surrounded by a throng apparently impa.s.sable.

"Room for the Royal Hadji--for the Prince of India!" the guide yelled.

"There are no poor where he is--make way!"

A thousand eyes sought the n.o.ble pilgrim; and as a path opened for him, a score of _Zem-Zemis_ refilled their earthen cups with the bitter water afresh. A Prince of Hind did not come to them every day.

He tasted from a cup--his followers drank--and when the party turned away there were jars paid for to help all the blind in the caravan back to healthful vision.

"There is no G.o.d but Allah! Be merciful to him, O Allah," the crowd shouted, in approval of the charity.

The press of pilgrims around the northeastern corner of the Kaaba, to which the guide would have conducted the Prince next, was greater than at the well. Each was waiting his turn to kiss the Black Stone before beginning the seven circuits of the House.

Never had the new-comer seen a concourse so wrought upon by fanaticism; never had he seen a concourse so peculiarly const.i.tuted. All complexions, even that of the interior African, were a reddish desert tan. Eyes fiercely bright appeared unnaturally swollen from the colirium with which they were generally stained. The diversities the penitential costume would have masked were effectually exposed whenever mouths opened for utterance. Many sang, regardless of time or melody, the _tilbiye_ they had hideously vocalized in their advance toward the city. For the most part, however, the effort at expression spent itself in a long cry, literally rendered--"Thou hast called me--I am here! I am here!" The deliverance was in the vernacular of the devotee, and low or loud, shrill or hoa.r.s.e, according to the intensity of the pa.s.sion possessing him.

To realize the discordancy, the reader must recall the multiplicity of the tribes and nations represented; then will he fancy the agitation of the ma.s.s, the swaying of the white-clad bodies, the tossing of bare arms and distended hands, the working of tearful faces turned up to the black-curtained pile regardless of the smiting of the sun--here men on their knees, there men grovelling on the pavement--yonder one beating his breast till it resounds like an empty cask--some comprehension of the living obstruction in front of the Jew can be had.

Then the guide, calling him, tried the throng.

"The Prince of India!" he shouted, at the top of his voice. "Room for the beloved of the Prophet! Stand not in his way--Room, room!"

After much persistence the object was achieved. A pilgrim, the last one in front of the Prince, with arms extended along the two sides of the angle of the wall where the curtain was looped up, seemed struggling to embrace the House; suddenly, as in despair he beat his head frantically against the sharp corner--a second thrust more desperate than the first--then a groan, and he dropped blindly to the pavement. The guide rejoicing made haste to push the Prince into the vacant place.

Without the enthusiasm of a traveller, calmly as a philosopher, the Jew, himself again, looked at the Stone which more nearly than any other material thing commanded idolatrous regard from the Mohammedan world. He had known personally most of the great men of that world--its poets, lawmakers, warriors, ascetics, kings--even the Prophet. And now they came one by one, as one by one they had come in their several days, and kissed the insensate thing; and between the coming and going time was scarcely perceptible. The mind has the faculty of compressing, by one mighty effort, the incidents of a life, even of centuries, into a flash-like reenactment.

As all the way from the first view of the sanctuary to arrival at the gate, and thence to this point, the Jew had promptly followed his guide, especially in recitation of the prescribed prayers, he was about to do so now; already his hands were raised.

"Great G.o.d! O my G.o.d! I believe in Thee--I Believe in thy Book--I believe in thy Word--I believe in thy Promise," the zealous prompter said, and waited.

For the first time the votary was slow to respond. How could he, at such a juncture, refuse a thought to the Innumerables whose ghosts had been rendered up in vain struggles to obey the law which required them to come and make proof of faith before this Stone! The Innumerables, lost at sea, lost in the desert--lost body and soul, as in their dying they themselves had imagined! Symbolism! An invention of men--a necessity of necromancers! G.o.d had his ministers and priests, the living media of his will, but of symbols--nothing!

"Great G.o.d! O my G.o.d!" the guide began again. A paroxysm of disgust seized the votary. The Phariseeism in which he was born and bred, and which he could no more outlive than he could outlive his body a.s.serted itself.

In the crisis of the effort at self-control, he heard a groan, and, looking down, saw the mad devotee at his feet. In sliding from the shelf of the base, the man had been turned upon his back, so that he was lying face upward. On the forehead there were two cruel wounds; and the blood, yet flowing, had partially filled the hollows of the eyes, making the countenance unrecognizable.

"The wretch is dying," the Prince exclaimed.

"Allah is merciful--let us attend to the prayers," the guide returned, intent on business.

"But he will die, if not helped."

"When we have finished, the porters will come for him."

The sufferer stirred, then raised a hand.

"O Hadji--O Prince of India!" he said faintly, in Italian.

The Wanderer bent down to get a nearer view.

"It is the Yellow Air--save me!"

Though hardly articulate, the words were full of light to the listener.

"The virtues of the Pentagram endure," he said, with absolute self-possession. "The week is not ended, and, lo!--I save him."

Rising to his full stature, he glanced here and there over the throng, as if commanding attention, and proclaimed:

"A mercy of the Most Merciful! It is the Emir El Hajj."

There was a general silence. Every man had seen the martial figure of the young chief in his arms and armor, and on horseback; many of them had spoken to him.

"The Emir El Hajj--dying," pa.s.sed rapidly from mouth to mouth.

"O Allah!" burst forth in general refrain; after which the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns were all excerpted from prayers.

"'O Allah! This is the place of him who flies to thee from fire!--Shadow him, O Allah, in thy shadow!--Give him drink from the cup of thy Prophet!'"

A Bedouin, tall, almost black, and with a tremendous mouth open until the red lining was exposed between the white teeth down to the larynx, shouted shrilly the inscription on the marble over the breast of the Prophet--"In the name of Allah! Allah have mercy upon him!"--and every man repeated the words, but not one so much as reached a hand in help.

The Prince waited--still the _Amins_, and prayerful e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. Then his wonder ceased. Not a pilgrim but envied the Emir--that he should die so young was a pity--that he should die at the base of the sanctuary, in the crowning act of the Hajj, was a grace of G.o.d. Each felt Paradise stooping low to receive a martyr, and that its beat.i.tude was near. They trembled with ecstasy at hearing the gates opening on their crystal hinges, and seeing light as from the robe of the Prophet glimmering through them. O happy Emir!

The Jew drew within himself. Compromise with such fanaticism was impossible. Then, with crus.h.i.+ng distinctness, he saw what had not before occurred to him. In the estimation of the Mohammedan world, the role of Arbiter was already filled; that which he thought of being, Mahomet was.

Too late, too late! In bitterness of soul he flung his arms up and shouted:

"The Emir is dying of the plague!"

He would have found satisfaction in seeing the blatant crowd take to its heels, and hie away into the cloisters and the world outside; not one moved!

"By Allah!" he shouted, more vehemently than before. "The Yellow Air hath blown upon the Emir--is blowing upon you--Fly!"

"_Amin! Amin!_--Peace be with thee, O Prince of Martyrs! O Prince of the Happy! Peace be with thee, O Lion of Allah! O Lion of the Prophet!" Such the answers returned him.