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 ass 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. God 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 noble 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 God, for God 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 passed 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 passed on.
Oh no, no, no; Naomi was not the most afflicted of all God'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 godspeed 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
sunshine 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 God."
"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 God has
washed me with water should not she also be clean?"
"God 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 God, will it come to pass?"
"God 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 pass.
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 passed since he had left it.
There at the fountains were the water-carriers
waitingwith 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 passed,
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
purplecanopy 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
cottagesomewhere. 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 passing 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 grass that the scorching sun had left green, so that the plain
over which it had passed 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 buttermilk 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."
Israel faltered and said, "He? Who, mother? Ah, you mean--"
"Who else but Israel the Jew?" said she, and then added, as
by a sudden afterthought, "But they say he is gone at last,
and the Sultan has stripped him. Well, Allah send us some one else
soon to set right this poor Gharb of ours! And what a man for poor men
he might have been--so wise and powerful!"
Israel listened with his head bent down, and, like a moth at the flame,
he could not help but play with the fire that scorched him.
"They tell me," he said, "that Allah has cursed him with a daughter
that has devils."
"Blind and dumb, poor soul," said the old woman; "but Allah has pity
for the afflicted--he is
taking her away."
Israel rose. "Away?"
"She is ill since her father went to Fez."
"Ill?"
"Yes, I heard so yesterday--dying."
Israel made one loud cry like the cry of a beast that is slaughtered,