At this word, though it made
pretence to
commend the temperance
of the crowd, the fury broke out more loudly than before.
"Away with the man!" "Away with him!" rang out on every side
in
countless voices, husky and clear, gruff and sharp, piping and deep.
Not a voice of them all called for mercy or for patience.
While the anger of the people surged and broke in the air,
a third voice came through the
tumult, and Naomi knew it,
for it was the harsh voice of Reuben Maliki, the silversmith and keeper
of the poor-box.
"And does God," said Reuben, "any more than Ben Aboo--blessings
on his life!--love that His people should be oppressed?
How has He dealt with this Israel ben Oliel? Does He stand steadfastly
beside him, or has His hand gone out against him? Since the day
he came here, five-and-twenty years ago, has God saved him or
smitten him?
Remember Ruth, his wife, how she died young! Remember her father,
our old Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana, how the hand of the Lord
fell upon him on the night of the day
whereon his daughter was married!
Remember this girl Naomi, this offspring of sin, this accursed
and afflicted one, still blind and speechless!"
Then the voices of the crowd came to Naomi's ears like the neigh
of a
breathless horse. Fatimah had laid hold of her gown
and was whispering. "Come! Let us away!" But Naomi only clutched
her hand and trembled.
The harsh voice of Reuben Maliki rose in the air again.
"Do you say that the Lord gave him
riches? Behold him!--he swallowed
them down, but has he not vomited them up? Examine him!--that
which he took by extortions has he not been made to restore?
Does God's anger smoke against him? Answer me, yes or no!"
Like a bolt out of the sky there came a great shout of "Yes!"
And
instantly" target="_blank" title="ad.立即,立刻">
instantly afterwards, from another direction, there came
a fourth voice, a peevish,
tremulous voice, the voice of an old woman.
Naomi knew it--it was the voice of Rebecca Bensabott,
ninety-and-odd years of age, and still deaf as a stone.
"Tut! What is all this talking about?" she snapped and grunted.
"Reuben Maliki, save your wind for your widows--you don't give them
too much of it. And, Abraham Pigman, go home to your money-bags.
I am an old fool, am I? Well, I've the more right to speak plain.
What are we
waiting here for? The judges? Pooh! The
sentence?
Fiddle-faddle! It is Israel ben Oliel, isn't it? Then stone him!
What are you afraid of? The Kaid? He'll laugh in your faces.
A blood-feud? Who is to wage it? A
ransom? Who is to ask for it?
Only this mute, this Naomi, and you'll have to work her a miracle
and find her a tongue first. Out on you! Men? Pshaw!
You are children!"
The people laughed--it was the hard,
grating, hollow laugh
that sets the teeth on edge behind the lips that utter it.
Instantly the voices of the crowd broke up into a discordant clangour,
like to the counter-currents of an angry sea. "She's right,"
said a
shrill voice. "He deserves it," snuffled a nasal one.
"At least let us drive him out of the town," said a third gruff voice.
"To his house!" cried a fourth voice, that pealed over all.
"To his house!" came then from
countless hungry
throats.
"Come, let us go," whispered Fatimah to Naomi, and again she laid hold
of her arm to force her away. But Naomi shook off her hand,
and muttered strange sounds to herself.
"To his house! Sack it! Drive the
tyrant out!" the people howled
in a hundred rasping voices; but, before any one had stirred,
a man riding a mule had forced his way into the middle of the crowd.
It was the
messenger from under the Mellah gate. In their new frenzy
the people had forgotten him. He had come to make known the decision
of the Synhedrin. The flag had fallen; the
sentence was death.
Hearing this doom, the people heard no more, and neither did they wait
for the
procession of the judges, that they might learn of the means
whereby they, who were not masters in their own house, might carry
the
sentence into effect. The
procession was even then forming.
It was coming out of the synagogue; it was passing under the gate
of the Mellah; it was approaching the Sok el Foki. The Rabbis walked
in front of it. At its tail came four Moors with shamefaced looks.
They were the soldiers and muleteers whom Israel had hired
when he set out on his
pilgrimage to that enemy of all Kaids and Bashas,
Mohammed of Mequinez. By-and-by they were to
betray him to Ben Aboo.
But no one saw either Rabbis or Moors. The people were twisting
and turning like worms on an upturned turf. "Why sack his house?"
cried some. "Why drive him out?" cried others. "A poor revenge!"
"Kill him!" "Kill him!"
At the sound of that word, never before
spoken, though every ear
had waited for it, the shouts of the crowd rose to madness.
But suddenly in the midst of the wild vociferations there was
a
shrill cry of "He is there!" and then there was a great silence.
It was Israel himself. He was coming afoot down the lane
under the town walls from the gate called the Bab Toot,
where the road comes in from Shawan. At fifty paces behind him Ali,
the black boy, was riding one mule and leading another.
He was returning from the prison, and thinking how the poor followers
of Absalam, after he had fed them of his
poverty, had blest him
out of their dry
throats,
saying, "May the God of Jacob bless you also,
brother!" and "May the child of your wife be blessed!"
Ah! those blessings, he could hear them still! They followed him
as he walked. He did not fly from them any longer, for they sang
in his ears and were like music in his melted soul. Once before
he had heard such music. It was in England. The organ swelled
and the voices rose, and he was a
lonely boy, for his mother lay
in her grave at his feet. His mother! How
strangely his heart
was softened towards himself and-all the world And Ruth!
He could think of nothing without
tenderness. And Naomi!
Ah! the sun was nigh two hours down, and Naomi would be
waitingfor him at home, for she was as one that had no life without his presence.
What would
befall if he were taken from her? That thought was like
the
sweeping of a dead hand across his face. So his body stooped
as he walked with his staff, and his head was held down,
and his step was heavy.
Thus the old lion came on to the market-place, where the people
were gathered together as wolves to
devour him. On he came,
seeing nothing and
hearing nothing and fearing nothing,
and in the silence of the first surprise at sight of him his footsteps
were heard on the stones.
Naomi heard them.
Then it seemed to Naomi's ears that a voice fell, as it were,
out of the air, crying, "God has given him into our hands!"
After that all sounds seemed to Naomi to fade far-away, and to come
to her muffled and stifled by the distance.
But with a loud shout, as if it had been a shout out of one great
throat,
the crowd encompassed Israel crying, "Kill him!" Israel stopped,
and lifted his heavy face upon the people; but neither did he cry out
nor make any struggle for his life. He stood erect and silent
in their midst, and
massive and square. His brave bearing
did not break their fury. They fell upon him, a hundred hands together.
One struck at his face, another tore at his long grey hair,
and a third
thrust him down on to his knees.
No one had yet observed on the outer rim of the crowd the pale slight girl
that stood there--blind, dumb,
powerless, frail, and so softly
beautiful--a waif on the
margin of a tempestuous sea.
Through the thick barriers of Naomi's senses everything was coming
to her ugly and terrible. Her father was there! They were tearing him
to pieces!
Suddenly she was gone from the side of the two black women.
Like a flash of light she had passed through the bellowing throng.
She had
thrust herself between the people and her father,
who was on the ground: she was
standing over him with both arms upraised,
and at that
instant God loosed her tongue, for she was crying,
"Mercy! Mercy!"
Then the crowd fell back in great fear. The dumb had
spoken.
No man dared to touch Israel any more. The hands that had been lifted
against him dropped back
useless, and a wide
circle formed around him.
In the midst of it stood Naomi. Her blind face quivered;
she seemed to glow like a spirit. And like a spirit she had
driven back
the people from their deed of blood as with the voice of God--she,
the blind, the frail, the
helpless.
Israel rose to his feet, for no man touched him again,
and the
procession of judges, which had now come up, was silent.
And,
seeing how it was that in the hour of his great need the gift
of speech had come upon Naomi, his heart rose big within him,
and he tried to
triumph over his enemies and say, "You thought
God's arm was against me, but behold how God has saved me
out of your hands."
But he could not speak. The dumbness that had fallen from his daughter
seemed to have dropped upon him.
At that moment Naomi turned to him and said, "Father!"
Then the cup of Israel's heart was full. His
throat choked him.
So he took her by the hand in silence and down a long alley
of the people they passed through the Mellah gate and went home
to their house. Her eyes were to the earth, and she wept as she walked;
but his face was lifted up, and his tears and his blood ran
down his cheeks together.
CHAPTER XVI
NAOMI'S BLINDNESS
Although Naomi, in her darkness and muteness since the coming
of her gift of
hearing, had
learned to know and understand
the different tongues of men, yet now that she tried to call forth words
for herself, and to put out her own voice in the use of them,
she was no more than a child untaught in the ways of speech.
She tripped and stammered and broke down, and had to learn to speak
as any
helpless little one must do, only quicker, because her need
was greater, and better, because she was a girl and not a babe.
And, perceiving her own awkwardness, and thinking shame of it,
and being abashed by the patient
waiting of her father when she halted
in her talk with him, and still more humbled by Ali's
impetuous help
when she miscalled her syllables, she fell back again on silence.
Hardly could she be got to speak at all. For some days after the night
when her emancipated tongue had rescued Israel from his enemies
on the Sok, she seemed to say nothing beyond "Yes" and "No,"
notwith
standing Ali's eager questions, and Fatimah's tearful blessings,
and Habeebah's
breathless invocations, and also notwith
standingthe
hunger and
thirst of the heart of her father, who, remembering
with many throbs of joy the voice that he heard with his dreaming ears
when he slept on the straw bed of the poor fondak at Wazzan,
would have given worlds of gold, if he had possessed them still,
to hear it
constantly with his waking ears.
"Come, come, little one; come, come, speak to us, only speak,"
Israel would say.
His appeals were
useless. Naomi would smile and hang her sunny head,
and lift her father's hairy hand to her cheek, and say nothing.
But just about a week later a beautiful thing occurred.
Israel was returning to the Mellah after one of his secret excursions
in the poor quarter of the Bab Ramooz, where he had spent the remainder
of the money which old Reuben had paid him for the casket
of his wife's jewels. The night was warm, the moon shone
with steady lustre, and the stars were almost obliterated
as separate lights by a
luminoussilvery haze. It was late, very late,
and far and near the town was still.
With his
innocentdisguise, his Moorish jellab, hung over his arm,
Israel had passed the Mellah gate, being the only Jew who was allowed
to cross it after
sunset. He was feeling happy as he walked home
through the
sleeping streets, with his black shadow going in front.
The magic of the summer night possessed him, and his soul was full of joy.
All his misgivings had fallen away. The coming to Naomi of the gift
of speech had seemed to
banish from his mind the dark spirit of the past.
He had no heart for reprisals upon the enemies who had sought to kill him.
Without that blind effort on their part, perhaps his great blessing
had not come to pass. Man's
extremity had indeed been God's opportunity
and Ruth's
vision was all but realised.