from the Kasbah. At the head of it walked a soldier, staff in hand
and gorgeous--notwithstanding the rain--in peaked shasheeah
and
crimson selham. Behind him were four black police,
and on either side of the company were two criers of the street,
each carrying a short staff festooned with strings of
copper coin,
which he rattled in the air for a bell. Between these came the victims
of the Basha's order--Naomi first,
barefooted, bareheaded, stripped of all
but the last
garment that hid her nakedness, her head held down,
her face
hidden, and her eyes closed--and Israel afterwards,
mounted on a lean and
ragged ass. A further guard of black police walked
at the back of all. Thus they came down the steep arcades
into the market-square, where the greater body of the townspeople
had gathered together.
When the people saw them, they made for them, hastening in crowds
from every side of the Feddan, from every
adjacent alley, every shop,
tent, and booth. And when they saw who the prisoners were they burst
into loud exclamations of surprise.
"Ya Allah! Israel the Jew!" cried the Moors.
"God of Jacob, save us! Israel ben Oliel!" cried the people
of the Mellah.
"What is it? What has happened? What has
befallen them?" they all asked
together.
"Balak!" cried the soldier in front, swinging his staff before him
to force a passage through the
thronging
multitude. "Attention!
By your leave! Away! Out of the way!"
And as they walked the criers chanted, "So shall it be done to every man
who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor
and a cheat."
When the people had recovered from their
consternation they began
to look black into each other's face, to
mutter oaths between their teeth,
and to say in voices of no pity or rush, "He deserved it!"
"Ya Allah, but he's well served!" "Holy Saints, we knew what
it would come to!" "Look at him now!" "There he is at last!"
"Brave end to all his great doings!" "Curse him! Curse him!"
And over the
muttered oaths and
pitiless curses, the yelping and barking
of the cruel voices of the crowd, as the
procession moved along,
came still the cry of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man
who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor
and a cheat."
Then the mood of the
multitude changed. The people began to titter,
and after that to laugh
openly. They wagged their heads at Israel;
they derided him; they made merry over his sorry
plight. Where he was
now he seemed to be not so much a fallen
tyrant as a silly sham
and an imposture. Look at him! Look at his bony and
ragged ass!
Ya Allah! To think that they had ever been afraid of him!
As the
procession crossed the market-place, a woman who was enveloped
in a blanket spat at Israel as he passed. Then it was come to the door
of the Mosque, an old man, a
beggar, hobbled through the crowd
and struck Israel with the back of his hand across the face.
The woman had lost her husband and the man his son by death sentences
of Ben Aboo. Israel had succoured both when he went about
on his secret excursions after
nightfall in the
disguise of a Moor.
"Balak! Balak!" cried the soldier in front, and still the chant
of the crier rang out over all other noises.
At every step the
throng increased. The strong and lusty
bore down the weak in the struggle to get near to the
procession.
Blind
beggars and
feeble cripples who could not see or stir
shouted
hideous oaths at Israel from the back of the crowd.
As the
procession went past the gates of the Mellah, two companies
came out into the town. The one was a company of soldiers returning
to the Kasbah after sacking and wrecking Israel's house;
the other was a company of old Jews, among whom were Reuben Maliki,
Abraham Pigman, and Judah ben Lolo. At the
advent of the three usurers
a new
impulse seized the people. They pretended to take the
processionfor a
triumphal progress--the
departure of a Kaid, a Shereef, a Sultan.
The soldier and police fell into the
humour of the
multitude.
Salaams were made to Israel; selhams were flung on the ground
before the feet of Naomi. Reuben Maliki pushed through the crowd,
and walked
backward, and cried, in his harsh, nasal croak--
"Brothers of Tetuan, behold your benefactor! Make way for him!
Make way! make way!"
Then there were loud guffaws, and oaths, and cries like the cry
of the hyena. Last of all, old Abraham Pigman handed over
the people's heads a huge green Spanish
umbrella to a negro farrier
that walked within; and the black fellow, showing his white teeth
in a wide grim, held it over Israel's head.
Then from fifty rasping throats came mocking cries.
"God bless our Lord!"
"Saviour of his people!"
"Benefactor! King of men!"
And over and between these cries came shrieks and yells of laughter.
All this time Israel had sat
motionless on his ass, neither showing
humiliation nor fear. His face was worn and ashy, but his eyes burned
with a piteous fire. He looked up and saw everything; saw himself mocked
by the soldier and the crier, insulted by the Muslimeen, derided
by the Jews, spat upon and
smitten by the people whose hungry mouths
he had fed with bread. Above all, he saw Naomi going before him
in her shame, and at that sight his heart bled and his spirit burred.
And, thinking that it was he who had brought her to this ignominy,
he sometimes yearned to reach her side and
whisper in her ear, and say,
"Forgive me, my child,
forgive me." But again he conquered the desire,
for he remembered what God had that day done for her; and
taking it
for a sign of God's pleasure, and a warranty that he had done well,
he raised his eyes on her with tears of bitter joy, and thought,
in the wild fever of his soul, "She is sharing the triumph
of my
humiliation. She is walking through the mocking and jeering crowd,
but see! God Himself is walking beside her!"
The
procession had now come to the walled lane to the Bab Toot,
the gate going out to Tangier and to Shawan. There the way was so narrow
and the concourse so great that for a moment the
procession was brought
to a stand. Seizing this opportunity, Reuben Maliki stepped up to Israel
and said, so that all might hear, "Look at the crowds that have come out
to speed you, O
saviour of your people! Look! look! We shall all
remember this day!"
"So you shall!" cried Israel. "Until your days of death you shall all
remember it!"
He had not
spoken before, and some of the Moors tried to laugh
at his answer; but his voice, which was like a frenzied cry,
went to the hearts of the Jews, and many of them fell away from the crowd
straightway, and followed it no farther. It was the cry of the voice
of a brother. They had been insulting
calamity itself.
"Balak!" shouted the soldier, and the crier cried once more,
and the
procession moved again.
It was the hour of Israel's last
temptation. Not a glance in his face
disclosed
passion, but his heart was afire. The devil seemed
to be jarring at his ear, "Look! Listen! Is it for people like these
that you have come to this? Were they worth the sacrifice?
You might have been rich and great, and riding on their heads.
They would have honoured you then, but now they
despise you. Fool!
You have sold all and given to the poor, and this is the end of it."
But in the throes and last gasp of his agony,
hearing his voice
in his ear, and
seeing Naomi going
barefooted on the stones before him,
an angel seemed to come to him and
whisper, "Be strong.
Only a little longer. Finish as you have begun. Well done,
servant of God, well done!"
He did not flinch, but rode on without a word or a cry. Once he lifted
his head and looked down at the steaming, gaping, grinning cauldron
of faces black and white. "O pity of men!" he thought.
"What devil is
tempting _them_?"
By this time the
procession had come to the town walls at a point
near to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was
no longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once
by sight of a
rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west
immediately over the arch of the gate.
Israel saw the
rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand
in the heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan,
into the land beyond--the plains, the hills, the desert where no man
was wronged--God Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading
them!
What happened next Israel never
rightly knew. His proper sense
of life seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
First the voice of the crier, "So shall it be done to every man
who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor
and a cheat."
Then the voice of the soldier, "Balak! Balak!"
After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply
and then to come muffled and dense as from the other side
of the closed gate.
When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a
barren heath
that was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding
Naomi by the hand.
CHAPTER XX
LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE
Two days after they had been cast out of Tetuan, Israel and Naomi
were settled in a little house that stood a day's walk to the north
of the town, about
midway between the village of Semsa and the fondak
which lies on the road to Tangier. From the hour
wherein the gates
had closed behind them, everything had gone well with both.
The country people who lay encamped on the heath outside had gathered
around and shown them kindness. One old Arab woman,
seeing Naomi's shame,
had come behind without a word and cast a blanket over her head
and shoulders. Then a girl of the Berber folk had brought slippers
and drawn them on to Naomi's feet. The woman wore no blanket herself,
and the feet of the girl were bare. Their own people were haggard
and hollow-eyed and hungry, but the hearts of all were melted
towards the great man in his dark hour. "Allah had written it,"
they
muttered, but they were more
merciful than they thought their God.
Thus, amid silent pity and
audible peace-blessings, with cheer
of kind words and comfort of food and drink, Israel and Naomi had wandered
on through the country from village to village, until in the evening,
an hour after
sundown, they came upon the hut
wherein they made
their home. It was a poor, mean place--neither a round tent,
such as the mountain Berbers build, nor a square cube of white stone,
with its garden in a court within, such as a Moorish farmer rears
for his
homestead, but an oblong shed, roofed with rushes
and palmetto leaves in the manner of an Irish cabin. And, indeed,
the cabin of an Irish renegade it had been, who, escaping at Gibraltar
from the ship that was
taking him to Sidney, had sailed
in a Genoese
trader to Ceuta, and made his way across the land
until he came to this
lonesome spot near to Semsa. Unlike the better part
of his countrymen, he had been a man of
solitary habit and
gloomy temper,
and while he lived he had been shunned by his neighbours, and when he died
his house had been left alone. That was the chance
whereby Israel
and Naomi had come to possess it, being both poor and unclaimed.
Nevertheless, though bare enough of most things that man makes and values,
yet the little place was rich in some of the
wealth that comes only
from the hand of God. Thus marjoram and jasmine and pinks and roses grew
at the foot of its walls, and it was these sweet flowers which had
first caught the eyes of Israel. For suddenly through the mazes
of his mind, where every
perception was indistinct at that time,
there seemed to come back to him a vague and confused recollection
of the
abandoned house, as if the thing that his eyes then saw they had
surely seen before. How this should be Israel could not tell,
seeing that never before to his knowledge had he passed on his way
to Tangier so near to Semsa. But when he questioned himself again,
it came to him, like light
beaming into a dark room, that not
in any waking hour at all had he seen the little place before,
but in a dream of the night when he slept on the ground in the poor fondak
of the Jews at Wazzan.
This, then, was the
cottage where he had dreamed that he lived with Naomi;
this was where she had seemed to have eyes to see and ears to hear